


Red Rooms, Black Nights

by orphan_account



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/F, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of the story of Dottie Underwood after Peggy reveals her true identity to her at the end of the fic "Just Because She's On A Mission..."   Dottie, now becoming comfortable with her birth name, Tatiana Urakova, has taken a little girl under her wing while methodically taking down the Red Room, pursuing all the truths she can find about her past that was erased by her Red Room training, discovering her humanity, and finding first revenge, and then redemption.  Heavily OC driven, but many Agent Carter canon characters will appear throughout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How to See Prague for Three Hundred Koruny a Day

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Just Because She's on a Mission, Doesn't Mean She Can't Have a Little Fun](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882313) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



Tatiana had always preferred Prague to Paris.  Her French was good enough to get around Paris easily, of course, but Prague, with its fountains and cathedrals, was just as beautiful, and it felt closer to home thanks to the background walla of the Eastern european tongues spoken around the city; Czech mostly, but Russian, Polish… that nagging familiarity she sometimes felt in her gut when she was experiencing something she’d been made to forget was always strong in Prague.

Of course, this time it was harder to run through the narrow streets along the Vlatva River in this part of the city; she had the weight of an eight year old girl on her back, along with her usual complement of supplies and equipment.  Her breaths drew heavier in chest as she moved quietly through the gathering dark.

“Where are we going, Tati?”  Regina asked her.

Tatiana would have sighed if she’d had breath to do it.  They were all the way up near Drahan-Troja, the parklands;  the cache she had here was down near Vysehrad.  And she was running with a child on her back.  “Looking for something.”

“Can I help?”

“No.”

She continued her brisk movements.  Her strength was waning.  There was no way around it.  She had never considered for a moment whether taking the orphaned child with her was the right thing to do after she’d rescued her from the clutches of the pimps who planned to sell her off to the KGB and the Red Room.  It was the natural choice.  The girl belonged to nothing and no-one.  Tatiana was nothing.  Tatiana was no-one.  She was a shadow now, and had to remain so, with the SSR, Leviathan and the KGB looking for her.  Still, the girl would still be safer with her than she was in a state home in Russia.  Tatiana Urakova, a.k.a. Dottie Underwood, was the best.  And one day, Regina would be the best, too.  Tatiana would see to that.  She was already teaching her French and English, teaching her to shoot a pistol, light a fire, throw a punch...

But now, she was tiring.  There would be money in the cache, when they reached it, but there was no way they were going to make it there tonight.  And she had enough in her pocket for a room, or a meal, but not both.  

“Are we going to sleep soon?”

“Are you tired?”

Regina yawned.  “No.  Are you?”

“Yes.  Why don’t we switch?  I can get on your back and you can run for a while.”  

Regina giggled.  The corner of Tatiana’s mouth curled a little.

“Will we sleep in the park?”

“No.  It’s patrolled by police.  We’ll get a room.”

Tatiana didn’t need to see the little girl’s face to know that she was pleased to be sleeping in a bed tonight.  Tatiana was too, but there was still the matter of food.  

As they made their way down the narrow cobblestone street, Tatiana decided it was time for the girl to walk.  She could see a narrow building across the street, half a block down, with a yellowing plaster face and a poorly lit placard on the front indicating a vacancy.  She suspected it was probably infested with something or other, but it would be a bed and would probably be something they had money enough for.  She patted Regina’s leg.  “Ok, down, little bear.  Your legs work well enough.”

Regina scrambled down obediently but then took off down the street, drawn to the warm gold light of a cramped, unassuming restaurant.  Tatiana caught up with her in time to find the little girl’s nose pressed to the glass, gazing longingly at the jars of Nakládaný hermelín in the window; soft, mild cheese pickled in spicy, garlicky oils and served with dark, chewy bread.  This place clearly pickled their own and were quite proud of it if they were bothering to display it.  Tatiana suspected it was probably too fiery for Regina (a few of the jars held slashes of bright red peppers suspended in the oil) but they’d run out of food, so anything looked good.

But caught in the glow of the window, Tatiana found that she too had a moment of trouble releasing herself from it.  Her eyes traveled further inside, to a comely young woman with sandy-colored hair tied up in a bun, hand-rolling meat dumplings behind the counter in preparation for the morning.  Tatiana watched her hands, big and nimble and covered with flour, deftly rolling out and pinching off half a dozen at a time.  Good, strong, working-class hands that knew their trade, she observed.  The woman’s eyes lifted from her task and first caught sight of Regina, then Tatiana.  She smiled, and beckoned them inside.

Regina looked up hopefully at Tatiana, who was disarmed for half a moment by the dancing warmth of the young woman’s eyes.   Then she looked down at Regina, trying not to show too much regret, and ushered the little girl away.  

  
  
  


***

  
  


When she’d been Dottie Underwood, she’d been wide-eyed, naive, and American as apple pie.  When she’d been Ida Emke, she’d been seductive, knowing, the perfect sex kitten.  She’d worn a dozen different names and faces in the time she’d been serving the Red Room as their best, and they’d all been brittle as an eggshell with nothing inside.  Since she’d been given the gift of her true name, her birth name, she’d been slowly contending with who that person was; the truth of Tatiana Urakova was limited and she was still learning it.  She knew that she was an exceptionally skilled dancer, a killer, a pretender.  She knew that that wasn’t enough to make a whole person.  Now she was also, in her way, a teacher, and strangely, a mother of sorts.  And she had a child to feed.

The room was barely larger than a closet, big enough for a small bed with a lumpy mattress, a small bedside table with a lamp that burned pinkish through its beat-up shade, and not much else.  Three hundred koruny, for this dump, she thought with mild annoyance.  It was all the money she had.  Prices had gone up a little in Prague since the last time she was here (when was that?  would she ever remember?).  She nodded Regina toward the bed.  “Rest for a bit.  I’m going to bring back something to eat.”

Regina clambered underneath the blankets with her shoes still on, closed her eyes and said, “Good.  I’m hungry.”  

Tatiana slipped quietly down the stairs.  She was dressed conservatively; dark, muted green shirtwaist dress and a black cardigan, her hair bound up off of her face, modest and, as beautiful as she was, unremarkable.  Nobody would suspect her of carrying lockpicking tools in the large black leather purse slung over her shoulder. 

As she’d hoped, the restaurant across the street was closed.  The lights were out.  She moved softly across the street; she was able to be nearly silent even in heels, and she slipped down the alley beside the restaurant, found the back door, and after a few moments of fiddling about with her tools, turned the knob and pushed it open.   


She found herself in the densely laid-out kitchen surrounded by elderly appliances that were scratched and dented but even in the low light, clearly kept spotless.  Two ovens, a griddle, a fryer, a large mixer, and then along the back wall, the steel refrigerator and deep freezer.  There had to be something in that refrigerator.  

She opened it and found, among the shelves full of premade meat and bread dumplings and large crocks of soup, some uncured cheese and a bottle of tomato juice.  She stuffed them into her purse.  

She glanced around and saw the shelves, where half a loaf of black bread sat in a sea of crumbs.  That would do, she decided.  This would be enough to quiet their bellies until tomorrow when they got to the cache.  Then they could have a decent hot meal.  She had a strong sense memory of good beer in Prague, and beet soup with cream, plates of salty-sweet meat dumplings and crunchy fried bread.  Her mouth watered at the thought.  As she was slipping the bread into her bag, the kitchen lights suddenly flicked on.  Tatiana froze.  

“I know you’re back there,” came a woman’s voice from the front of the restaurant.  She spoke in Polish, which was close enough to Russian that they could converse. 

Tatiana had to decide quickly.  She wasn’t interested in snapping anyone’s neck over some cheese and bread.  She eyed the back door.

“You’re the one with the little girl, yes?”  the voice continued.  It was the young woman she’d seen rolling dumplings earlier.

Tatiana weighed the options.  “I just need to feed her,” she called back.  “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Surprisingly, she heard a chuckle.  “Well, neither do I.  Why don’t you come out here and we’ll see what we can do?”

Tatiana hesitated.  If there had been police with the girl, she’d have heard them come in.  So she emerged slowly from the kitchen.  The young woman was standing there on the other side of the counter, her hair down and hanging in loose waves over her shoulders, looking at her warily, but with some sympathy.

“So, you need to feed your little girl.”  Her eyes flicked up and down Tatiana’s body.  “You’re not dressed like someone who needs to steal food.”

“We’re dancers,” Tatiana said, relieved to be slipping into her comfortable cover story.  “We got separated from our troupe at the station and all our bags and money went with them, except for what I have on me now.  We’re trying to get to Bratislava.  The tour manager is wiring us money but we won’t be getting it until tomorrow.  My little girl is hungry.”  She took a breath.  “My last three hundred koruny went to a room across the street–”

“Ugh, that fleabag place.  You’ll have money tomorrow?” the young woman interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Go get your little girl,” the young woman ordered.  “I’ll make you something to eat.”

Tatiana shook her head.  “No, really it’s alright.  I’ll just–”

“You’ll pay me tomorrow, after you get money, yes?”

Tatiana struggled.  Stealing what she needed, taking it, was one thing.  But being given something… the instinct to receive kindness had been beaten out of her long ago, and it was still difficult.  “You don’t need to put yourself out, really–”

She waved dismissively.  “You can tell me some travel stories.”  She moved past the counter and into the tiny kitchen, giving Tatiana a bright smile.  But her tone was no-nonsense.  “Don’t be foolish.  Go get your hungry daughter.”  

Tatiana started toward the back door.

“You can go out the front.”

She turned on heel and headed toward the front door.

“But please give me back the bread and cheese, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Tatiana smiled.  The girl was sharp.  She knew exactly what was in her kitchen and knew that those were the only things that would have made sense for her to take.  She opened her purse and set everything on the counter.  “I’ll be right back.”

  
  
  


****

  
  
  


Anna Gryzwacz was a Jew from Gdansk whose widower father had been shrewd enough to recognize what was happening in Europe quickly enough to move himself and his only daughter out of Poland before the Nazis overran it.  Tatiana listened to her tell the story of their move to Prague while watching those swift, skilled hands preparing dumplings and potato pancakes, and frying up some bread to go with the soup she was warming.  She watched the wry smile that would crinkle the girl’s broad cheekbones from time to time as she talked about her father, a lifelong cook and restaurant owner, who had passed the year before.

“So you see,” she went on, pouring two bowls of soup and setting them on the counter with a plate of crisp fried bread, “I have a weakness for a parent trying to care for a child alone.  It’s very hard.”

Tati had reached for the well rehearsed story that she and Regina relied upon; they were mother and daughter, and Regina’s father had been a soldier who died in the war.  It never failed to garner sympathy and open doors when other tactics did not.  They looked enough alike, with matching golden curls and determined chins, that they were never questioned.

Regina smiled.  She was seated on a stool in front of the counter, with a little wooden crate underneath her bottom so that she could actually see over the top of her bowl.  Her feet swung back and forth as she listened, but after thanking Anna, she was mostly silent except for eager slurping and crunching.

“You’re a hungry little thing, aren’t you?”  Anna observed, casually tousling Regina’s hair.  Regina stiffened for a moment and looked at Tati, who gave her a reassuring nod.   Yes, it’s ok for her to do this.  We’re safe here.

They weren’t always, a fact Regina had come to understand quickly.  Tatiana knew that at her side was probably not an ideal place for an eight year old girl, if you were to ask a normal person their opinion.  She was chasing dangerous people, and being chased  by dangerous people, but she was better than they were.  She would win.  She was the best.  And soon enough, Regina would be just as good.  

After all, the girl already had sharp eyes.  She brought Regina along on a break-in not too long ago, and the little girl had immediately spotted one of the items they were looking for.  When she found some butterscotch candies in a desk drawer, Tati had let Regina have one as a reward, and then helped herself to one as well.  They had quietly enjoyed their candies while they finished ransacking the place.

"Shy," Anna remarked gently, noting the silent exchange between them.  "Don't worry," she promised, "I don't eat little girls.  At least, not without a little cream.  And I'm all out." She winked.

Regina smiled back and drank the rest of her soup out of the bowl, which left a big magenta smile across both of her cheeks.  Tati wordlessly gestured to the napkin in front of her.  Regina wiped her mouth and folded her hands on the counter in front of her.  Regina spoke little, but Tatiana could tell she was charmed by the young Polish cook because she was smiling more than usual and using her best table manners.

For her part, Tatiana was also charmed by Anna’s way, a particular mix of sweetness and sharpness that struck an unidentified chord of longing in her, resonating (she suspected) with some memory that had been torn out of her.

And her cooking was excellent.

Over a plate of crisp potato pancakes and sour cream, Tatiana told Anna stories of getting lost on the Paris Metro, and of how surprisingly pretty it was in Lubljana, how the opera house in Madrid was stunning but too noisy, and how she didn’t like Rome as much as she’d expected to, although she rather liked Italian food and the wine was very good.  She found herself wanting to entertain Anna, wanting to keep those clear eyes focused on her, hanging on her words.  She went so far as to talk about having seen New York City, which Anna was particularly interested in.  It was a calculated choice; everyone in Eastern Europe loved to hear about the United States.  But it was hard for her to keep from getting lost in her memories of New York, of being Dottie Underwood.  Dottie had given too much of herself, had let a woman leave lipstick marks all over her, had broken open a little too much.  She was harder to shake than the other aliases that she had shed like a snake shedding skin.

“It’s like any other big city,” Tatiana said flatly, instantly regretting it.

“Nonsense!” Anna exclaimed.  “It’s bigger than Paris, you must have seen some things!”

“You wouldn’t like American food,” she insisted.  “The architecture is disappointing, except of course for Carnegie Hall.  Yes, the buildings are tall, but so what?  They’re not beautiful.”

Peggy Carter had been beautiful, she thought, and then banished it.

“It’s very big,” she went on, “and if you have money to spend, there’s a lot of shopping.  There are things to see, but it’s very modern.”  Tatiana shrugged.  “I don’t know, I was there for work, you know, and when you tour, you don’t get to see much.  I’m sure I missed a lot.”

“Statue of Liberty?  You must have seen that at least.”

Tatiana smirked.  “Yes.  France did a very nice job.”

By this time, with a full belly, and tired of the adult conversation, Regina was becoming drowsy.  She was propping her chin up on her hands and her eyes were drooping.  Tatiana glanced at her.  “Ready for bed?” she asked.

Regina nodded.  “Yes.”

Tatiana lifted her from the stool and set her down on her feet.  She looked at Anna, suddenly feeling awkward, and said, “Thank you for dinner.  I…”

Anna placed a hand over hers on the countertop, and said, “Come now, it’s just a little food, let’s not get silly over it.  I’ll see you both tomorrow?”  But it didn’t sound like a question, it sounded like a certainty.

Later, as they were lying next to each other in the lumpy bed, flat on their backs, as they always did, Regina asked as she was falling asleep, “Tati?”

“Yes?”

“Anna is very nice.”

“Yes, she is.”

“Will we stay here for a while?  Can we see her again?”  
“Yes, we’ll see her again.”

Silence again.  Then, “Why do you sleep with that scarf around your wrist?”

Tatiana had managed to not need handcuffs to sleep, as she once did, but she couldn’t sleep unless she was bound in some way, and she was bothered particularly by notions that she might hurt the little girl in her sleep if she had a nightmare.  So she’d managed to shed the handcuffs for a silk scarf, and taught Regina to tie it, tight enough to make her feel secure, but not enough to cut off her circulation.  Regina had never questioned this; it was simply part of the weird routine of their lives.

“Why are you asking?”

“I want to know.”

“I have bad dreams sometimes.  It helps me.”  Not a lie, but far from the full story.

A long silence.  Regina’s breathing seemed to be settling into a rhythm of sleep.  

But then, “Tati?”

“Go to sleep, Regina.”

“But, Tati, I have bad dreams too sometimes.”

“Of course you do,” Tati answered matter of factly.  The girl had been orphaned, kidnapped, and watched Tatiana kill half a dozen men before her eyes.  And that was just what Tatiana knew about.  

But then she understood what Regina was getting at.  She rolled over and fished one of her stockings off of the floor.  Together, she and Regina fastened one end around Regina’s wrist, and the other end to the headboard of the bed.

“It might not help,” she warned.

“It helps you,” Regina replied.

“Yes, but there are reasons for that.”

“What reasons?”

“Go to sleep, Regina.”

A few beats of silence.  “Goodnight, Tati.”

And then the little girl’s breathing settled into the deep, slow rhythm of sleep.  And this time, it lulled Tatiana into the sleep that she’d slept since she was a girl; black, shallow, untouched by the dreams just on the other side of it.  But she was fairly sure when she woke the next morning that there had been, somewhere among those dreams, flashes of Anna’s hands, large, nimble and rough on her body.


	2. The Finding of Lost Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tatiana and Regina linger in Prague.

Oksana Koslova was Tatiana’s next target.

Since discovering her name and a few scant other details about herself a year ago, Tatiana had given herself a new mission.  No more killing on behalf of Leviathan; she would take the organization apart, alone if necessary, and prevent them from making any other girls suffer as she had in the Red Room.  Oksana Koslova was the doctor’s woman in the Red Room.  She was the gaunt, cold female face of the tortures designed (mostly by men) to turn Tati and the other girls like her into monsters.  Koslova had given her the order to break Anya's neck, the snapping sounds of her bones still haunting her sleep at night.  Koslova had been the one to drug her before her graduation.  There were few targets that meant more to Tatiana than Oksana Koslova.   

Leviathan had put together that Tatiana had gone rogue, had turned on them, and was now in the business of meting out retribution for her suffering, and so certain targets within the organization had been moved.  She was fairly certain that Koslova had been put well out of the way and was hiding somewhere in Greece.  She was frustrated at having to stop in Prague, but after losing her target in Kiev, she was running out of money and supplies, and Prague was the closest cache.  

Everywhere that they had placed caches for her, she had taken half of what was in them and made her own cache, separate, in another location in the city.  She didn’t know why, at the time.  But now it was clear; even then, someplace inside her that she couldn’t yet see, there was a young girl clinging fiercely to a tattered scrap of her own self, something that was buried so deeply that Fenhoff and Koslova and Ryzminsky couldn’t get to it.  That young girl had the wisdom to know that one day, she would need these resources, even if she didn’t entirely know why.

And now, they were sustaining her in her war against those who has created her.  She was flooded with relief to open the battered metal locker in the bus station and find it all still as she'd left it; Ukrainian passports, a few thousand koruny, and several thousand dollars in American currency, which was always good everywhere.  Several clips of ammunition.  A copy of Anna Karenina.  Odd.  She didn’t remember leaving that.  Of course, there were a lot of things she didn’t remember.  She flipped the yellowed pages open to the start of chapter one: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  She smirked.  It would have been just like her to leave herself something like that to find later, a poke at her own isolated existence.

Less isolated now, though, she supposed, carting a child around.  Tatiana mused as she cleaned everything out of the cache, including the book, whether she and Regina constituted a family, and if they did, whether they were a happy one.  It was possibly the first time either thought had occurred to her.  She was going to need to spend some time tonight with a razor blade and some adhesive to alter one of these fake passports and make Regina her daughter.

She showed one of them to Regina.  "This one will be yours.  Now it will be easier to travel."

"What's that?"

"Your papers.  Or they will be, once I put your picture on them."

  


***

  


They found their way back to Anna's restaurant.  Tatiana paid for their meal the night before, which Anna at first tried to refuse, but eventually she took. "When do you leave?" she asked as the lunch crowd was clearing out.

Tatiana hesitated.  It was likely to be trains all the way down into Greece.  She had the schedules in her bags.  "Tomorrow morning," she decided.  "We've already missed the only train for today."  A lie.  She wasn't sure why.  They could leave now if they wanted; any number of trains were leaving that day that would take them in the direction of Athens.

Regina looked at her quizzically, but said only, "Mama, I'm hungry.  Can we eat lunch?"

Before Tati could answer, Regina was climbing into a chair at a table near the counter.

"Yes, I suppose we should," Tatiana agreed.  Regina, when she did address her in front of others, always called her Mama.  

Anna waved her to go sit, promising she'd make them something delicious.  

Tatiana sat across from Regina, who was smiling at her and idly sliding a finger around in her mouth.

"What?" she demanded after a moment.

Regina leaned forward and whispered, below the clatter and bang of Anna cooking, "Anna is very nice.".  She continued her conspiratorial smile.

"Yes," Tatiana agreed, still bewildered.  "Take your finger out of your mouth."

Regina complied, still smiling.  "We're not leaving yet so we can stay with her for longer, right?". Regina whispered.

Tatiana frowned.  "We still have business in Prague," she whispered back.  Another lie.  She mentally cursed herself for adopting this little girl who, at the moment, seemed to have a better fix on her motives than she herself did.

They sat at the table and looked at each other in silence, Regina smiling and Tati giving her a stern glare, although she wasn't sure what she was being stern about.  Regina started screwing her mouth up in different shapes, pursing her lips, puffing out her cheeks, still looking amused.

Tatiana glanced around the empty restaurant.  "Stop with the faces," she commanded.  She'd not seen the girl act this way before.

They resumed their staring contest.  Tatiana was aware of the restaurant door opening behind her, a man coming in.  She saw Regina's face darken.  The child had seen enough in her short time with Tati to have good instincts.  Anna was emerging from the kitchen with two plates of sausage and bread dumplings, and she stopped short, her face going slightly pale.  Tati twisted in her seat.

The man was poor, unkempt, clearly drunk, and gripping a pistol in his shaking hand.  He was licking his lips nervously.  

“Not again, Piotr,” Anna said firmly, but there was a slight pleading in her tone.

He stumbled forward, brandishing the pistol.  “I don’t want much,” he slurred, “just what’s in the register.”

She looked at Anna, whose face was difficult to read.  She made an executive decision.  Piotr would not be robbing this restaurant today.  As he moved past her, she stuck a foot out.  He went pitching forward, the pistol flying from his hand and one round going off as his hand hit the floor.  Regina jumped out of her chair, leaped quickly over Piotr, kicking the gun a few feet away, while Tati jumped on his back, slammed his head into the floor once, knocking him out, and then stood up.  She’d barely broken a sweat, but Anna was staring at them in shock.

Tati undid the knot on her scarf and tied his hands behind his back.  She glanced up and saw that Regina had run over to where the gun had ended up, picked it up, and was aiming it at Piotr.  Anna looked truly alarmed.  “Regina!” she finally exclaimed.  “That’s very dangerous, little one, put that down!”

Of course Regina knew the rudiments of firing a pistol, and one as small as this wasn’t likely to have the sort of recoil that would hurt her.  But it was best that Anna didn’t know that.  “Yes, Regina,” Tatiana said slowly.  “It’s very dangerous indeed.  Please put that down on the floor, very carefully, and let Anna call the police.”

Regina processed the instruction and did as she was told, backing away from the pistol.

“You know this man?” Tatiana demanded of Anna.

“Yes,” she said, still shaking.  “He’s robbed me before.  He’s pathetic more than he is a danger but that damn gun makes me nervous.  One of us could have been shot just now.”

Tati stepped swiftly over Piotr and moved behind the counter.  She quickly embraced Anna, breathed her scent, and gave her hair a quick stroke.  “But nobody was. We’re all fine.”  She had the brief, nauseating thought that had she chosen to kill Anna last night, this pathetic sod would have probably been the first one picked up.

Anna shook her head.  “And the both of you… so brave… I can’t thank you enough…”  She paused and glanced at Regina, who was standing in the corner, calmly, looking at them expectantly, waiting to be told what was going to happen next.  “Isn’t she frightened?  Look at her, she’s not even crying!  Oh, Tatiana, she must be in shock!”

She ran over to Regina and knelt down, inspecting her face worriedly.  “Are you alright, little one?”

Regina gave her a sweet smile.  “Yes, I’m fine.”

Anna shook her head in bewilderment.  “Incredible.”  She stood up, wiping her palms on her apron.  “I’m calling the police.  You keep an eye on him.”  She paused, looking between them.  “You’re not staying at that fleabag across the street tonight.  You’re staying with me.”  She marched back to the kitchen to telephone the police.

Regina looked at Tatiana, clearly pleased with the way that had gone.  

“Swallow up that smile,” Tati instructed.  “You look like you ate a canary.”

Regina rearranged her face to a more serious look.  

“Better.”

  


******

  


Anna’s flat was a small walk-up in the Josefov section of town.  It wasn’t the prettiest building, but her two-bedroom, third-floor apartment had a spectacular view of the Old Town Square and the spires of the Tym Church and the Astronomical Clock.  A few moments before eight o’clock, Anna called Regina to the window.  “I think you’ll want to see this,” she said.  

They peered out the window, Tatiana leaning curiously over their shoulders.  At eight on the dot, the clock sprang to life, little figures parading across its face as it chimed.  

“Look,” Anna whispered, “it’s the twelve apostles… and there’s Death!”

Tatiana couldn’t tell whether she or Regina was more fascinated with the little figures and their movements along with the chiming.  She knew who the apostles were, more or less, though she’d not been indoctrinated.  Regina seemed to have some response to them, though.  And it was clear from the fondness in Anna’s tone that, though she was a Jew, she had grown up surrounded by the Catholics and their fairy tales and rather liked them.  There was something charming about them, Tatiana supposed.  And they did get certain things right, those religious types.  They did architecture well, in their day.

Tatiana stood, as rapt as the two of them, watching the clock until it finished its celebration of the hour.  

“My papa paid far too much money for this little place,” Anna sighed, “just to have the view of the clock.  It’s one of the oldest ones like it in the world, you know.”

Her tone was so sweet, so warm, as she spoke of her father.  Tatiana couldn’t make the pieces fit together in her mind; a Polish Jew, savvy enough to get out of Poland before Hitler knocked it over, but so sentimental for these works of a faith that wasn’t even his, that he spent a good chunk of his nest egg on a place with a view of the clock.  

People were confusing.

She pulled herself away from the window and rummaged in one of her bags, pulling out nightclothes and two toothbrushes.  “Regina,” she called over her shoulder, “come change for bed and brush your teeth.”

Regina wandered over, her fingers digging around her in her mouth again.

“What are you doing?” Tati demanded.

Regina paused for a moment, winced a little, wrinkled her nose, and then pulled her fingers out.  Pinched between her little fingers was something small and white.  She dropped it into her other palm and held it out to Tatiana.  “My tooth came out,” she informed her.  It sat in her hand, a tiny bit of blood on the root.

“I see,” Tatiana observed.  “Which one was it?”

Regina opened her mouth wide and pointed.  Tatiana could see a gap where there used to be an incisor, and the little nub of a new one coming through the gum.  

“My goodness!” Anna exclaimed.  “What an exciting day!”  She came over to inspect the tooth.  “Look at that!”  She looked up at Tatiana.  “We’ll have to put that under your pillow for the beaver.”

“The beaver?” Regina asked.  She and Tati both looked at each other blankly.

Anna gave them a strange look, then adjusted.  “Oh, you Russians must have something else.  A mouse, or a squirrel maybe?”

Tati scrambled for a moment.  She was meant to do something with the damned tooth.  Americans did something with children’s teeth, there was a fairy… There was of course, no equivalent in the Red Room.  She realized that she had no idea what Russian parents did with their children’s teeth when they fell out.  “Ah… you must mean the tooth fairy?”  she asked.

“It’s a fairy?”  Anna laughed.  

“Not for most of us,” Tatiana admitted, trying to avoid having to lie too much.  “But at my house, it was a fairy.”

“So then, for Regina, it’s a fairy too?”

Tati nodded.  “Yes.  The tooth fairy,” she declared.  It sounded good.

Anna hurried off to make up the bed in the second bedroom, and make a suitable spot for them to leave Regina’s tooth.

“What are we supposed to do with it after it goes under the pillow?” Tatiana whispered.

Regina shrugged.  “Nobody cared when we lost a tooth in the state home,” she whispered back.

Tati frowned.  "Well, just keep quiet and listen.  We'll figure it out."

She picked the tooth from Regina's little palm with delicate fingers, and set in on a napkin on the kitchen table.  Regina went to the bathroom and emerged a few moments later with her nightgown on.  She wandered over to the sofa, placed her hand on the bulky arm, and began practicing her positions, as Tatiana had taught them to her.  First, second, third, fourth-

"Hold yourself tall," Tati corrected her calmly, watching out the corner of her eye as she rifled through their bag.  "Posture is everything."

Regina nodded and started over, straightening up as tall as she could.

"Better," Tati remarked.  She noticed Anna standing in the hallway, watching them with curiosity.  

"Are you ready, Regina? I've found a nice little tea tin to put your tooth in so that we don't lose it before the beaver-". She caught herself. "I'm sorry, the fairy, gets here."

Tatiana plucked the tooth off of the table and dropped it in the little flat tin.  The three of them marched to the small bedroom, to the bed which was covered with what looked like a handmade Afghan in bright, cheerful colors.  "This blanket is very pretty," Regina exclaimed as she pulled the covers back and climbed in.

"Thank you," Anna answered sweetly, "I made it."

Regina was impressed by this.  

Anna produced a book.  "I know you probably don't have any of your bedtime books with you, but luckily, I have one of my old favorites hanging around from when I used to take care of a little girl in Gdansk."

It was a stiff board book, entitled "Pat the Bunny".  She glanced at Tati with a twinkle in her eye and added, "And perhaps your mama would like a bedtime story too."

Tatiana sat down on top of the covers beside Regina, tucked her in, and then Anna parked herself on the edge of the bed, and opened the book.

It was marvelous.  It was probably intended for a slightly younger child than Regina, but it was still mesmerizing.  Each page had a little tactile element: the bunny page had a bit of fur, there was a page with a daddy shaving, and his face had sandpaper glued to it, and so on.  Regina of course, touched each one, followed by Tatiana.  She was hyper aware of Anna's closeness, her mix of scents, and once or twice, she dared to let her fingers brush Anna's where they held the page.  It was harmless enough.  But it made her feel strange, made her pulse twitch.  It made her feel something she'd not felt since New York.  

Since Peggy Carter.

And this business of bedtime stories... Was Regina going to want this all the time now, she briefly panicked.  Among the rest of their supplies, were they going to have to start carrying children's books?

She crushed the panic into a small, hard brick, the way she was trained to do.  Anna kissed Regina goodnight, and then Tati did.  They clicked off the lights, and left.

Anna disappeared into her bedroom and emerged a moment later in a pale blue dressing gown.  Tatiana situated herself on the couch and attempted to bury herself in the copy of Anna Karenina she'd found in the cache.

"Not really for little ones, that book," Anna joked.

Tati smiled.  "No, thank goodness you found that lovely book."

"Although," Anna went on, strolling into the kitchen and putting on water for tea, "Regina almost seems like she could handle it.  You speak to her like a tiny adult."

"Well, war forces children to grow up quickly," Tatiana replied carefully.

Anna sat down beside her on the couch, looking at her sympathetically.  "It does indeed," she agreed softly, placing a gentle hand on Tati's knee.  "How old was she when her father left for the war?"

The trick was to avoid lying too much and having to remember it later.  She went with what she knew of Regina's truth. "She doesn't remember him," she said simply, with a carefully placed note of melancholy.

She wanted Anna to stop touching her knee.  She also didn't.  

Sensing she'd perhaps brought things to too sad a place, Anna gamely shifted topics.  "So, what will she find under her pillow from the... the fairy?"

Tatiana shrugged, stalling.  "I'm not sure what I have."  She still didn't know what it was supposed to be.

"Well, I have some peppermint candies, if she likes those," Anna offered.  

Tatiana nodded slowly.  "Yes, I think she'd like that.". She glanced down at Anna's hand, still lightly settled on her knee.  "I wouldn't mind one either," she added with a small smile.

"Let's see what we can do," Anna replied with a wink.  She wandered back into the kitchen and rifled through a cabinet, looking for them.

Tatiana went into her purse and fished for something to pass conversation with Anna while they drank their tea.  She was sure she had a few postcards from pretty places that she could entertain Anna with.  Unbidden, her fingers unearthed something she wasn't quite prepared to see at this moment: her only photograph of Peggy Carter.

She'd taken it one night while Peggy slept, half-dressed under the rumpled bedclothes, and developed it on her own.  She kept it, long after Peggy was no longer her lover, long after she herself was no longer Dottie Underwood, because it still stirred feelings that she simultaneously hated and needed.  

Anna stole up beside her with a couple of wrapped candies, and stopped.  "Who's that?" she whispered.  

Tatiana started and hastily stuffed the picture back into her purse.  "Just a friend," she answered quickly, "a flatmate from dance school. I was actually looking for some postcards to show you..."  She was off her guard and it was obvious that Anna had interrupted a private moment.

Anna sat down beside her and pressed the candies into her palm.  "You don't have to lie to me," she told her gently.

Tatiana waited.  She didn't want to give away more than necessary.

"She was your lover, no?" she pressed.  Her eyes were soft, and kind.

Tatiana hesitated again.

"I've had women, too, you know," Anna assured her.  She was soft, but firm and serious.  "You don't need to hide that from me."

Tatiana sighed.  "It's complicated," was all she could say.

"But you loved her."

Tatiana thought hard about this.  She had never said so, nor even thought it in so many words.  "I never called it that, but ... She changed me," she finally worked out.  She noisily unwrapped a candy and popped  it in her mouth.  

Anna nodded.  "That sounds like love."

"We nearly killed each other," Tatiana laughed sadly.  Literally, but Anna didn't need to know that.

Anna seemed to radiate these feelings back at her.  "Also sounds like love."

They laughed together for a moment.

"And she was the best friend I ever had."  Peggy, after all, had been the one to give her the information about her history.  Peggy had been dogged in her caring and creativity to make her comfortable.  

Anna squeezed her hand.  "Definitely love."

At this moment, the kettle in the kitchen began to whine.  Anna got up to pour their tea.  Tatiana was suddenly Dottie Underwood again, feeling all those feelings again, as if they were fresh.  Craving the feeling of being tangled in another woman's body and being told she was the best.  

She wanted Anna, she realized with a sudden moment of shock.  She had from the moment she spotted her through the restaurant window.  

She looked at Anna pouring the tea, her eyes tracing the generous curves of her body underneath the pale blue dressing gown.  Hips enough to grab onto properly, tits enough to lose herself in, waist not tiny, but just small enough to make a pleasing curve from one to the other.  She realized with another sudden jolt of surprise, this one flavored with vague amusement, _I appear to have a type_.  She liked a body that didn’t look like it would fall apart under a bit of rough play.

Anna returned with a tray bearing two teacups and a sugar bowl and creamer.

“You don’t have to serve me,” Tatiana objected.  “You’re in your home now.”

“I wanted tea,” Anna replied dismissively.

They sat quietly, watching each other stir sugar into their cups, sipping at them without talking.  

Finally, Anna set her cup down and, with slight annoyance mixed with flirtation, said,  “Stop looking at me like that unless you’re going to kiss me.”

Tati paused with surprise, and set her cup down.  She leaned forward and her mouth found Anna’s, their lips parting, and their tongues still hot from the tea, brushing over each other’s lips.  The electricity shot down her spine at feeling this again, and it was inevitable, she turned hungry.  She became Dottie Underwood, the only person she had ever been who had truly enjoyed sex with another person.  She grabbed Anna’s dressing gown and kissed her more roughly, biting into her lower lip and raking her fingers through Anna’s hair.

Anna stopped her, and looked her in the eye.  “Take it easy,” she ordered.  

Tati was taken aback.  “I’m sorry,” she apologized after a moment.  

She took a breath and leaned in again, and let herself match Anna’s energy.  Anna was enthusiastic, but she was gentle; rather than devouring, she wanted to explore.  She wanted to feel Tati’s lips and know the way her tongue moved and how she responded to different, soft nibbles and gentle sucking.  Tati’s heart sped up.  Anna’s hot mouth was soft, a tease, an invitation, and it made her hungrier.  She struggled to remain gentle, to kiss Anna the same easy way Anna was kissing her.  Anna looked at her.  “I like you,” she decided, her mouth curling in a naughty grin.

Tati smiled.  “I think I like you too.”

They kissed a few moments more.  Tati’s desire grew.  She laid a hand on one of Anna’s glorious breasts through the fabric of her dressing gown.  She felt the nipple harden through the thin, soft fabric.  She tried not to do it the way she had done it other times before, the way Peggy had seemed to like it, hard and rough.  She tried to touch Anna the same way that she liked to be kissed.  Soft but firm, tracing the nerves and learning it thoroughly.  Anna’s hot tongue in her mouth was driving her to distraction but she still restrained herself, stroking the breast in her hand with great interest, feeling its weight, squeezing it gently, working a thumb slowly around and then on top of the stiffened nipple.  Anna moaned softly.

“It’s good?” Tati whispered, but she could tell that it was.

“Mmm,” was all Anna could say.  Those rough, nimble fingers traced up the side of Tati’s neck, around the shell of her ear, whispering against her nerves and waking them up.  But Tati was impatient.  She tugged at the dressing gown, trying to pull it open, and felt the pretty Polish girl chuckle as she did.

“What’s so funny?”  Tati demanded.

“You’re not very patient,” Anna teased, and kissed her again.

“Sorry,” Tati answered between kisses, “it’s been a long time.”

More hot kisses, more touching.

“This is the part,” Anna told her with a gentle poke to her ribs, “where you’re supposed to remind me that you have to leave tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Tati answered with confusion.  “But you know that.”

“Yes,” Anna sighed with exaggerated exasperation, “but you’re supposed to remind me.  It’s just the polite thing to do.”  Her eyes danced with amusement.

“Oh… well, you know I’m leaving tomorrow.”  She didn’t understand.

“Now, you’re supposed to tell me how you can’t promise me anything,”  Anna prompted.

Tati shook her head.  “I can’t promise you anything.”

Anna kissed her again.  “That’s alright.  You’re interesting and brave and strong and beautiful.  I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try to go to bed with you tonight.”

Tati opened her mouth to say more, but a cry pierced the quiet night.  It was Regina.

“MAMA!”  she cried.  “MAMA!”

Tati jumped up.  She looked at Anna regretfully.  

“Go, go!”  Anna waved her off.

She went into the bedroom and sat Regina up in bed, recognizing the hollow fear that gripped the little girl's face.  She talked her calmly back into reality.  She reminded her where they were and what was happening.  Regina settled down after a few moments of Tati’s calm words.  

“Can I have a scarf tonight?”

Tatiana found a scarf, and tied her wrist to the bed.  She changed into her nightdress and climbed into bed next to Regina, who helped her tie her own wrist to the bed.  Her body was still humming and wishing it was out on the couch with Anna.  But Regina needed to sleep.  

Tatiana slept the shallow, dark sleep that the black widows did, and in the morning, woke up feeling as though she had not slept at all.


	3. Old Habits, New Deaths

Tati awoke before the sun was up, to the sounds of Anna rattling quietly about in the kitchen. She untied herself from the bed and went out into the living room. Anna was already dressed, and plugging in a coffee percolator and piling some pastries on a plate. She turned around, surprised to see Tati. “I’m sorry, I thought I was being quiet.”

“I’m a light sleeper,” Tati explained, and walked softly into the kitchen. In her bare feet, her steps were soundless.

“I see.” She took in the sight of Tatiana in her white nightdress and smiled sadly. “I was about to leave you some coffee and some _punchki_ … there are some fruit ones and cheese ones there, and there’s milk and juice in the icebox for Regina, if you–”

Tati moved swiftly across the little kitchen and slid her arms around Anna’s waist, pulling her in and kissing her in one swift movement. Anna let herself melt against her for a moment. She was delicious. She smelled of baked goods and…. and whatever that soap was that she used. it wasn’t floral or fancy, it was actually somewhat utilitarian and just smelled clean. But her body felt like something rich and luxurious and Tati didn’t want to let go of it.

Anna pulled away from her. “I have to go open the restaurant,” she sighed regretfully. “You won’t be here when I get back, will you?”

Tatiana shook her head. “Probably not.”

“A last one, then,” Anna sighed. She pushed up against Tati and kissed her again, firm, sweet, and lingering.

They jumped apart at the sound of tiny footsteps entering the kitchen.

Tati turned around and found Regina, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She wondered what the little girl saw. With her sharp eyes, Tati thought ruefully, probably everything. “We must say goodbye to Anna now, Regina,” Tati told her, “because we’re leaving today.”

Regina bounded over and threw her arms around Anna, squeezing her once very hard before letting go. She and Tati both thanked Anna several times for everything and Anna was quick to dismiss them both, thanking them for stopping drunken Piotr from robbing her register again.

Anna left, and Regina and Tati sat down quietly at the table to eat the doughy pastries and drink the strong coffee and juice that Anna had left.

“Are we really leaving?” Regina asked, halfway into her first cheese _punchki_.

Tatiana nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“I don’t want to,” Regina answered, but it wasn’t a whining complaint. It was simply the little girl making her objections known. “Anna’s very nice. She likes me. And she likes you, too.”

Tatiana eyed her for a moment, again giving her that stern look.

“Where are we going?”

“Greece. But if anyone asks between now and the time we get to the station, we are going to Bratislava.”

Regina thought about this as she worked on another mouthful of pastry. “What’s in Greece? Another bad person?”

“Yes, another bad person.”

“Is it nice in Greece?”

“It depends where we go. Some parts are nice.”

“Is the part we’re going to nice?”

Tatiana realized she wasn’t sure, because she didn’t know where they were hiding her target. “We’ll find out.”

She could start with the safe houses she knew in Greece, but there were a dozen or so scattered around the country and she suspected that Koslova was too valuable to them to be placed somewhere that obvious. Leviathan went to a great deal of trouble to keep things double-blind and considered all information within the organization need-to-know only, and the likelihood that anyone in any of the safe houses would know anything was slim.

In Prague, she knew, Leviathan had people. She didn’t fear them; she didn’t need to know who they were to know she was better than they were. The real trouble was that with the layers of internal secrecy, they weren’t likely to know where Koslova was either.

But also in Prague, she knew, the SSR had people. And she was fairly sure she knew where.

 

***

 

They stood side by side in the street in front of the unassuming grey building marked in stenciled letters, “Telefónica Czechosolvak”. Regina’s little mittened hand hung onto Tatiana’s.

“Do you remember how we practiced?”

Regina nodded.

They walked into the front door, past the front desk and up a bank of stairs in the left hand corner of the lobby. They emerged onto a small, cramped room with a phone bank where a row of women sat, speaking into their headsets in Czech, Russian, English and French. The woman nearest the door, a heavyset blonde in a bright blue sweater, looked up and spied them. Regina crossed her legs and started to do an uncomfortable little dance.

“You’re not supposed to be up here,” the woman said.

Tati smiled her most ingratiating smile. “I’m sorry, my little one needs a bathroom, and we couldn’t seem to find one in the lobby.”

The woman looked at Regina and her contortions, and back up at Tati. She frowned, tapped the woman next to her, said something to her in English, gestured to Tati and Regina. The other woman nodded. The blonde in the blue sweater got up and waved them along. “Come with me, I’ll take you to the ladies’ room.”

She stepped past them and led them down the dimly-lit corridor with its green walls. Tati waited until they were far enough from the door that nobody would hear her, slid up behind the woman, pulled a small pistol from her purse and jammed it into the woman’s back. “Don’t make any sounds,” she said in English, “and I won’t shoot you.”

The woman froze. “You won’t get out of here.”

“We will,” Tatiana said calmly. “But first, you’re going to tell me which office is your boss’s.”

The woman held still and silent. Tatiana sighed. “So the other lady at the switchboard calls security if you don’t come back in a few minutes, yes?”

The woman said nothing. This was, of course, as good as a yes. She glanced over her shoulder at Regina who was watching carefully. “We don’t have the time for this.”

She pistol whipped the woman once in the back of the head, and caught her as she collapsed. She looked at Regina. “Open that door,” she ordered, nodding toward the closet door nearest them. Regina opened the door and Tati dragged the woman over to it and deposited her inside. She shut the door and locked it.

She took Regina’s hand and walked quickly down the hall toward the only office door that had a light on. It was marked, “CHIEF ČESTMIR BROŽ”. She opened it without knocking.

The man inside looked up with a raised eyebrow. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m sorry, I think we got lost on the way back from the ladies’ room,” Tatiana said in her most innocent voice as she pushed into the office. “I hate to be a bother, but do you have a light?”

The chief was a young man, but his eyes were clear and shrewd. He clearly didn’t like the way she was inviting herself into his office, but by the time he was on his feet, Tatiana had grabbed his tie, slammed his head against his desk, and Regina was standing beside him, holding her small pistol to his temple.

“What the…?” was all he could manage at the sight of the little girl coolly pointing a gun to his head.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Chief,” Tatiana told him, her voice having shed all of its sweetness. “I just need you to make a call for me. I need you to contact Agent Carter in the United States for me.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play games with me, Chief. She and I are old friends. She’ll want to hear from me. But we need to be quick.”

The chief picked up the phone from his compromised position, dialed zero for the switchboard.

“Don’t pull anything. No code words or you’ll regret it. Just ask them to put you through to New York.”

He did as he was told. A few minutes ticked by as Tatiana held his free hand behind his back, watching the beads of sweat on his temple.

“Agent Carter?” he said finally. “This is Chief Broz in Prague. I have a… a friend of yours who wants to speak to you.”

She took the phone. “Peg?”

There was a long silence. “Dottie?”

And just like that, she was back in New York, trying to shed Dottie Underwood from herself like a second skin. Peggy’s voice, its rich alto, and English accent, yanked her back into a tempest of memories she didn’t need right now. “That’s not my name anymore.”

“Right. Sorry. Old habits.”

“I wish I had time for small talk, but unfortunately I’ve got a gun to the Chief’s head here, so I’m afraid I have to keep this short. I need your help.”

“I see.”

“Wondered if the SSR had eyes on Oksana Koslova?”

Peggy paused. “We might. Can I ask why?”

“You know why.”

Peggy paused again. “Right.” Tati heard her shuffling through some papers for a moment. “Mykonos,” she said finally. “Leviathan seems to be putting her up in style. Can’t give you more than that, I’m afraid.”

“That’s good enough,” Tati said. Her heart beat in her throat for a moment more.

“You’re welcome,” Peggy answered dryly. “I’d say you have less than a minute before armed agents come through that office door. And if you do make it out of the building, they’ll be looking for you in the usual places.”

“ _If_ I make it out," Tatiana chuckled. "Thanks, Peg.” She hung up the phone. She slammed the chief’s head against the desk, knocking him out, and then took Regina’s hand. “Come on, little bear. We need to go down the fire escape.”

Regina scrambled down the fire escape stairs as if they were a jungle gym. Tatiana gave herself the luxury of feeling some pride that the little girl was so nimble even in that dress and those hard little shoes. She got to the bottom though, and there was a bit of a drop the ground that was likely too far for her. Tati clambered down the ladder past Regina. She glanced up and saw a grey-suited agent leaning out the window, gun raised, his eyes scanning down the fire escape to where they hung, their feet dangling a few feet above the ground.

Tati let go and dropped to the pavement. The heel of her shoe shot down into a grate leading into a draining system, and her ankle twisted sharply. That was going to hurt later, but now, they needed to get out. She looked up at Regina. “Let go, I’ll catch you!”

Regina hesitated only briefly, but it was long enough for the agent to discharge his weapon in Tatiana’s direction. She dropped to one knee, took a pistol from her purse and fired back. He ducked inside for a half a moment.

Tati didn’t like gunfire going on with Regina in between them. “Let go!” she called again.

Regina let go, and dropped down into Tatiana’s arms. The impact of her body sent another stab of pain through Tati’s ankle. She tucked into a crouch with Regina underneath her. Another shot rang out and a bullet whizzed so close she could hear it. She fired once more and then swept Regina out of the alleyway. No more shots rang out after them.

 

********

 

Tatiana sat on Anna’s couch, her foot propped up on the low coffee table in front of her. They’d made their way back here by a combination of grace and wits, slipping into the back of a milk truck headed to Praha 22 and then circling back on foot to the Josefov district. There was no question it would have been easier to make that getaway without a little girl in tow. But there was no question, as she sat here in the fading light, with her ankle throbbing and her shoulder smarting (that last bullet had grazed her after all, but adrenaline kept her from noticing until now), that the little girl belonged to her.

Peggy had said quite clearly, “They’ll be looking for you in the usual places,” meaning they’d be sending agents to every means of egress from the city. The bus stations, the train station, and probably patrolling any ports worth mentioning along the Vlatva River.

“What will you tell Anna?” Regina asked as she hauled Tatiana’s duffle bag onto the couch and opened it.

“I was knocked over by a cyclist and need to rest my foot a few days. We’ve planned to meet the troupe in Budapest instead.”

Regina nodded and pulled a roll of cloth bandage out of the bag. She was clearly displeased with her guardian’s condition, but glad to be spending another night at Anna’s. She went to the icebox and got out the milk, then dragged a chair over to the cabinets and pulled out two glasses. They sat together and drank milk while Tati wrapped her ankle.

As the clock in the square began to chime, the door rattled open, and there was Anna. She was surprised to see them. “What are you doing here? I thought you had to go!” Her eyes lit on Tati’s elevated foot. “What happened to you?”

Tati waved dismissively. “I was knocked over by a careless cyclist. We missed our train, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be able to dance for a few days anyway. We’re going to have to meet the troupe in Budapest.”

Anna rushed over and laid a careful hand on the wrapped ankle. “Have you put ice on this?”

Tati shook her head.

Anna rushed to the icebox and dumped a bunch of ice cubes into a towel, and then brought it back over. She laid it gently on the wrapped ankle. “Regina,” she said to the little girl, “can you be a good little bear and hold this in place?”

Regina nodded. She sat on the edge of the coffee table and held the ice where Anna had placed it. Anna sat beside Tati on the couch and rubbed her back. “Are you alright?”

Tati shrugged. “I’ll be fine. It’s not my first fall, you know.”

Anna noticed the hole in the shoulder of Tati’s sweater and the dried blood. “Oh! And your shoulder!?”

She ran to the bathroom medicine chest and returned with some iodine, cotton, and tape. She peeled the dark green sweater off of her and cleaned the little wound, and taped it up. She glanced at the twin glasses of milk on the table. “I think mama needs something a bit stronger than milk, don’t you think, Regina?”

Anna went away, and came back with two shots of vodka. Tatiana drank it gratefully.

Anna fussed and chattered about Tati needing someone to take proper care of her, and Regina tried to stifle her grins while watching her whip together some dinner. She stood on a crate and watched Anna preparing the food with the swiftness of someone who did these things professionally. The smells of beef sirloin, vegetable gravy, bread dumplings and cranberry sauce soon filled the tiny place and made Regina and Tatiana ravenous.

It was strange, but although it was more uniquely Czech than any other dish she’d had in Prague, it reminded Tati of the States. It reminded her of American Thanksgiving (she’d had two proper ones in her life). Something about the combination of meat, cranberry, and gravy. It was rich and filling and starchy and delicious. It was accompanied by warm camaraderie and an atmosphere not unlike that depicted in Norman Rockwell’s paintings of family dinners. After a year of running, it felt like home, or what she’d imagined that would feel like if she’d ever had one.

 

***

 

They read “Pat the Bunny” again that night, and Tatiana was less shy about brushing Anna’s fingers when she reached out to touch the fur and sandpaper pages of the book. Half her mind was closed off and thinking about Koslova, and Mykonos, what was in Mykonos, and how she might find Koslova once they got there. But the other half was here, in a tiny apartment in Josefov, with a little girl who pretended to be her daughter and a beautiful young woman who was gladly playing at being her wife for as long she was allowed to. She clung greedily to every minute of it.

Anna kissed Regina goodnight, and Tati stayed a moment more after Anna left, to tie a soft scarf around the little girl’s wrist. She hobbled out into the living room.

Anna, in her dressing gown, rose from the ruddy  halo of lamp light on the couch and came over to help her. Tati didn’t need help, but she took Anna’s hand nonetheless, draped an arm around her shoulders, and let Anna support her steps over to the couch. She settled into the worn, comfortable cushions, her arm still around Anna’s shoulders.

Anna leaned forward, pulled the coffee table in, and gently took Tati’s leg and placed it up on the table. They watched each other, their unspoken intentions absolutely clear.

Tati reached her hand out and slipped her fingers through Anna’s pretty hair, watched as Anna’s fingers moved up from her ankle, lightly tracing up her strong calf muscles, delicately pushing the hem of her dress up over knee, stroking her knee. Her touch was not aggressive, nor was it faint or faltering. Hers were the fingers of an experienced traveler, eagerly exploring a new map for the first time.

Tatiana, however, was all thumbs for a moment.  She'd tricked herself into wanting Peggy, let herself fuck her because she was a target.  But Anna gave her no such excuse.  Anna was just a beautiful woman that Tati wanted.  She found her fingers stroking down the side of Anna’s neck, slipping into her collar. They exchanged warm, mischievous smiles.

Anna rose, rucked up her skirt, and settled into Tati’s lap, facing her, and began kissing her mouth with those kisses that were somehow both firm and gentle, enthusiastic and yet restrained. Her hands came up to cradle Tati’s face and then unpin her hair. She felt Anna’s tongue brushing over her lips, urging her mouth open, drawing her deeper into the kiss. She slid a hand up Anna’s thigh, gripped it, delighted in the little breath she heard her draw at this.

She slid both hands up into Anna’s dress and pulled it up over her head. She paused to look at her, in her lacy slip that seemed to shimmer in the low light. The clock in the square chimed nine, and its song reverberated in her chest, in the place where she supposed was a heart that she still had yet to fully know. She spent a moment dwelling in her hunger for this girl’s body, her hands roving with purpose over her hips, her waist, her mouth finding a home in the swell of her breasts and leaving trails of little kisses on her throat. She’d never held back before, never waited, never gone slow enough to contemplate the charms of wanting. She held new appreciation for it now, keenly aware of Anna’s fingers at her collar, unbuttoning the single button on the dark blue tea dress she wore. Anna was beautiful. She was gentle. She was a girl who needed to be fucked senseless, and it would be delicious.

Anna slid down onto her knees, pushed Tati’s skirt further up, and began kissing the insides of her thighs. She felt the heat wash through her; lust, yes, wanting, yes. But something else. She knew what Anna intended to do. And Tati wanted to feel this, but she was disquieted by the entirely rational fear that a new experience with a new lover would bring out those needs that she had only managed to transcend once with Peggy. She worried that she couldn’t have that pleasure with Anna without needing pain along with it, and it made her stop everything.

“Wait,” she said, and her voice had a slight anxious edge to it. “Come back up here.”

Anna looked at her questioningly, but climbed back up into her lap. Tati stroked her thigh, rubbed her thumb deep into the flesh as she moved a little higher. “I’m better at giving than I am at receiving,” she explained.

Anna looked quizzical, but accepted it for the moment. Tati pulled her closer and kissed her, kissed her breasts, caught her nipples between her teeth and teased them softly through the fabric of her slip. Anna moaned quietly. Tati slid her hand further up her thigh and found a lacy hem of underwear. She stroked Anna gently through the fabric of the underwear, the same touch that Anna had used elsewhere; firm, but not aggressive. She could tell when her fingers found the sensitive place because Anna gasped, tangled her fingers in Tati’s hair, pressed her chest into Tati’s face. It was sumptuous. It was almost too much. She couldn’t bear to have anything in the way.

She tugged the underwear aside just enough to slip her fingers in through the leg, and then into Anna, feel how wet she was, how ready for her touch. “Yes?” she asked.

Anna nodded, her eyes closed and her breath ragged with pleasure. “Yes,” she sighed. She pushed her underwear further aside and rose up and down on Tati’s fingers. Tati was struck dumb at how sweet she was, how like an angel her face was ( _where would such a thought come from?_ , she wondered briefly). She moved in response to Anna’s rhythm, the hungry way she was riding her fingers, giving her deeper thrusts, longer strokes, drinking in the feel of her, the way she looked down at her through her hazy bliss, the gentle sway of her hair, her breasts. She ached with lust. She had not felt that in a long time.

“Tell me you like it,” she whispered into Anna’s chest.

Anna moaned. “I love it,” she breathed, moving up and down on Tati’s strong, unyielding fingers.

“Tell me I’m the best,” she whispered, and she couldn’t keep the note of pleading out of her voice. She needed it. She needed to hear it.

Anna smiled a little, seeming amused, but she saw the piercing seriousness of Tati’s face, and had no trouble moaning, with utter sincerity, “You’re the best, _mawa_.”

 _Mawa_ , Tati thought. In Polish this was like being called, “baby.” She picked up her pace. “You want me to fuck you harder, _mawa_?”

“No, it’s good exactly like that,” Anna panted.“You’re the best.”

And the clenching Tati could feel inside Anna, and the waves of shivering that raced through Anna’s frame as she came a few moments later told her that it was true. She held Anna tightly, continuing her movements through her orgasm, feeling Anna’s strong hands clutching at her hair. Her moans were sweeter than sugar, her cunt wetter than the river, her body softer than any silk she had felt. And she could render all of it a beautiful mess. She was still the best.

Anna kissed her, deep and languid, stroked her face with appreciative weight in her touch. Tatiana drank her in, breathed her breath, lingered inside her. "Won't you let me?" Anna whispered against Tati's lips.

Tati hesitated. How to explain without explaining? "I want you to," she began, kissing her. "I just... I don't know if I will be able to..."

Anna stroked her face again. "Someone taught you it's not alright to feel good," she realized.

Tati struggled for a moment but decided this was the simplest explanation. "It's complicated, but something like that, yes."

Anna looked at her, smiling that same soft, sad, sympathetic smile she'd seen before. "Will you let me try? If it's no good, we can stop, we can try something else."

Tati wanted her so desperately she was willing to try. She kissed Anna again. "Alright," she whispered.

Anna slid down onto her knees again, slid Tati's dress up around her waist, and gently pulled her soft black underthings down, carefully slid them over her bandaged ankle. They looked at each other. Anna took Tati's hand and kissed it, hung onto it as she slowly kissed her way up the inside of one thigh and then down the other. She kissed all around her hips, her flat belly, her lips and tongue leaving a warm, wet trail that cooled in the air she moved along. She looked up at Tati, who was watching her with a strange collision of desire, fascination, and apprehension. "It's okay?"

Tati nodded. She tugged at Anna's arm and took her other hand, and they held each other's hands this way while Anna kissed her way along the soft skin.

"Tell me when you want to try more," Anna murmured against her hip, dragging her warm tongue down the crease where it met her thigh. She licked her way slowly across Tati's belly, and then did the same on the other side. Kissed the bone of her hip, dragged her tongue down beside her sex without touching it. Tati clutched Anna's hands. Her hips started involuntarily moving. Anna squeezed her hands.

"I want to try," Tati whispered.

Anna smiled gently, used her elbows to push Tati's thighs further apart, and then leaned in.

The first stroke of her tongue was paralyzing. She felt it, soft and warm, move with aching slowness, from her entrance up through her folds, to her clit. Her breath stopped. She gripped Anna's hands. It was like nothing else she had felt. Terrifying, intense, raw, beautiful pleasure.

Anna paused. "It's ok?"

Tati shook a little. "I... Again, please?"

Anna smiled, and licked her softly again. No wonder she'd been able to reduce Peggy to a lovely wreck with her mouth. This was exquisite, so good it was almost painful... Almost painful....

Her nerves became restless; the part of her mind that had been left on the torture beds of the Red Room started to wake, seeking something she was no longer willing to give it.

She would trick it.

Anna looked at her. "Do you want me to keep going?"

Tati nodded. "Yes, but... Can you do something for me?"

"Of course."

"Call me Dottie."

Anna rolled the name around in her mouth once or twice and then looked at her curiously.

"It's a nickname. It's... It's more intimate," she said. A stretch, but how could she ever explain?

Anna still held her hands. "Dottie," she whispered, "I'm going to make love to you."

She leaned in and dipped her tongue in, softly licking her as if she were a delicious treat to be savored. Tatiana could just be Dottie again, the one piece of her past that she couldn't let go of, the version of herself who could let herself be pleased by a lover.

She couldn't release Anna's hands as she sank lower into the couch cushions and opened herself to the careful, tender kisses that were tearing her breath from her body. "Anna..." She sighed.

"Dottie," Anna murmured between her ministrations. She focused her attention on the stiff clit, tasting it with first the tip, and then the flat of her tongue. Tatiana let herself go, let herself be Dottie again, let this pretty girl's mouth please and torment her until she was thrusting against it, wanting this to never be over. She shook, wore a sheen of sweat on her skin, felt everything in her turning upside down. She hadn't had anything like this since New York, and even New York had not been like this.

"Anna," she moaned again, trying to keep the volume down.

"Dottie," Anna whispered back, "I want you to finish for me, yes?"

She stifled a groan. And then came that moment; that moment where she left her body, where she became something else, an element, a force of nature. That moment where the joy, the vulnerability, became intense enough to turn her into an ecstatic bundle of sunlight and nerve endings. That moment when she was more powerful than what had been done to her, when she was claiming what was taken from her. The blazing, brilliant rebellion of orgasm filled her hollow places and made her feel, for a moment, whole.

One day, she thought, she would not need to trick herself, but she had still won, tonight.

"It's ok?" Anna asked her, as she slumped there, shaking.

Tati nodded. "Let's go to your bed," she said breathlessly.

They spent two hours more, naked in Anna's bed, where they made love again. It was easier the second time. Easier still, the third. Tati was wrung out and her skin smelled of Anna, her lips tasted of Anna. As she tiptoed back to the bed in which Regina lay, the thought crossed her mind that this was not a luxury she should have afforded herself. But she tied her wrist to the headboard, and banished the thought.


	4. Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things must end. Sometimes, badly.

Ida Emke hadn’t existed for very long.  Long enough to wear some sparkly jewelry and sexy dresses and get invited into Howard Stark’s bed.  On reflection, Tati realized that she had liked the way those clothes looked on her.  She’d have liked to have an excuse to wear them for Peggy but it had never come up.  

Ida had existed for one reason and one reason only:  to take advantage of Howard Stark’s weakness. She recalled that long weekend on the French Riviera, speeding out in his little boat onto the water that mirrored the blushing sky, letting him screw her in the back of it while she retreated somewhere into her head.  Her eyes had lit on the boat’s engine and noticed it was one of his own make, and her mind crunched through its specifications as they were marked on the side of it, so that she wouldn't have to hear her own voice filling the sea air with Ida's moans and canned dirty talk.  She didn't ask him, though she was curious, how he had managed get four cylinders to give a full throttle RPM of 5800 without overheating, or whether that mesh at the top was a dual-chamber cold-air intake.  She didn’t ask him, because Ida didn’t know about those sorts of things.  Ida knew how to look good in lacy black lingerie, and drink champagne without smudging her lipstick.

And afterwards, back at his mansion, she showered and scrubbed until her skin was pink and steaming, and she couldn’t smell his cologne on it anymore.

She wasn’t supposed to have feelings about the characters she played, the personae that she dissolved into and out of.  But now she was Tatiana, and while she was still finding out who that was, she knew one thing for certain: of all the identities she’d worn, Tatiana detested Ida the most.  Ida, who fucked her way into Howard Stark’s house to steal his “bad children” out of his vault, was the personification of everything the Red Room had stolen from her as their price for making her “the best”.  Tatiana seethed at the realization that she had been robbed of an instrument of joy, that it was turned into a weapon, packaged as a toy, and handed back to her in such a condition that she could barely stomach using it.  But Tatiana woke in Anna’s apartment on this particular morning to find that Ida had tossed up one final useful memory, leaving it like a parting gift on the doorstep of her consciousness.

> “ _You should come with me to Greece at the end of the month,” Howard said, mixing a martini.  “I just bought a villa on Platis Gialos.”_
> 
> _“Oh,” Ida had purred, winding her leg around him as he stirred the drink, “where’s that?”_
> 
> _“Mykonos.  It’s beautiful.  Best beaches in the world.”_
> 
> _“I thought the Riviera had the best beaches,” Ida had reproached him with a little pout._
> 
> _“It does.  But so does Mykonos.  I don’t bother with anything but the best.”_

Good job, Ida, she thought with some annoyance.

 

 

**

 

Four more days, she and Regina passed in Anna’s little apartment.  Anna would go to work before the sun came up each morning, leaving coffee in the percolator and _punchki_ on the table.  Tati would coach Regina in ballet, French, and English.  With her ankle, no meaningful combat lessons could go on, and the place was really a bit small for that anyway.  So instead, they looked at maps and she taught Regina geography.   _This is Asia.  That is Europe.  This is Italy and Germany, and the two of them, along with Japan, started the war that ended not long ago.  This is America.  They fought Germany just like Russia did, but no, they are not our friends.  Yes, it’s very big, and most everyone speaks English.  That’s Greece.  That’s where we’re going when we leave here.  This is Africa.  They used to send slaves to America on big ships.  No, they don’t do that anymore.  Not like that, anyway.  Slavery looks different nowadays, and goes by other names.  This is England.  They fought Germany also.  No, they are not our friends, either.  There is South America.  Many of the Germans who ran away after the war are hiding in this country here, called Argentina._

Regina was disappointed that they couldn't go out and see more of Prague, but she understood when Tati told her it wasn't safe.  By the careful usage of a compact mirror, Tati would check the windows several times a day, and the last day or two she'd been seeing a few too many grey suits for her liking.  It wasn't safe for them to be here any more.  It wasn't safe for Anna, either.

So every moment here was remembered, imprinted, clung to.  Tati and Regina would tidy the place, not that it needed much, and Tati would make little repairs while Anna worked during the day; a squeaky closet door, a chair that wobbled too much, a leaky faucet.  Anna would come home bearing dinner from the restaurant -dumplings, potato pancakes, black bread, mild cheeses, and a bottle or two of beer for her and Tati- and then after dinner, ignoring Anna's protests, Tati would wash the dishes and Regina would dry them.  They would sit together on the couch and, since Tati had fixed the blown speaker in Anna's radio, they would listen to the family radio hour.  Regina would lay between them, her head in Tati's lap and her feet in Anna's.  

She and Regina were rarely physical with each other except when their cover demanded it.  Apart from holding onto the little one’s hand in busy places so as not to lose her, there was little of this sort of relaxed affection, even when they slept, or when one or the other was wracked by a nightmare.  It wasn't terrible, this way of being, Tati decided, but it was strange.

And then, after Regina went to sleep, there were the nights.  When Anna would bring her to bed, call her Dottie, make love to her with those nimble fingers, taste every bit of her with those sure, easy kisses.  She imprinted those nights on herself, too, would have tattooed them on herself if she could have, knowing they were a fleeting gift; Anna’s hips rocking underneath her, the way she held onto Dottie’s hair when she was being kissed between her thighs, the way she’d breathlessly sigh Dottie’s name over and over when her pleasure was peaking,  the relaxed warmth of her gaze after she came, stretched out on the bed, inviting her lover to make herself comfortable on her body.  Tati could barely fathom how casually generous she was with her body, struggling to match it.  But Anna didn't seem to expect her to, seeming pleased to have as much as she was able to give, whatever it might be.  Peggy had stoked lusts, Peggy had managed to find her way past Dottie’s armor, but it had always been complicated.  Their sex had always been a loaded weapon.  With Anna, it was… different.  She would be sorry to leave.

They lay together now, as they had been doing these last few nights, Tati resting her head on Anna’s chest, listening to the clock chime eleven in the square and the hush of late night beginning to muffle the street sounds of Prague outside the window; the roar and rattle of taxis and milk trucks, the loud conversations in Yiddish and Czech all faded to a shadow.  She was etching the look of Anna’s face onto her mind, the blue highlights of night on the pale of her skin.  She was committing to memory the idle drumming of the pads of Anna’s fingers on the small of her back.  She kissed her once, lingering a long time after their lips parted, breathing her breath.

“I really do have to leave tomorrow,” she said at last.  

Anna smiled and stopped her drumming.  “Budapest, is it?”

Tati nodded.

“Why do I suspect you of planning to sprain the other ankle?” she teased.  

“You're the suspicious kind, maybe?” Tati teased back.

“No, I think not.”  Anna nipped at her chin.  “I just know how naughty you are.”

Tati grinned and nipped back.  “You don't have the slightest idea how naughty I am.”  Too heavy a truth for just now, so she buried it in another kiss.

“Hmm, naughty Dottie, yes?” Anna nibbled at the edge of Tati’s jaw thoughtfully, considering this while she toyed with turning this exchange into another round of foreplay.  

“Hmm,” Tati answered, one of her hands beginning to debate the merits of sliding further up Anna’s thigh.

They explored these ideas in depth for a moment.  

Something stirred out in the kitchen, a single thud, quiet enough that anyone but Tati would likely have missed it, particularly if they were in bed with a woman like Anna.  But Tati was Tati, and she was the best.  She stiffened, and pulled away, looking over her shoulder.  

“What-?” Anna began to ask, but Tati hushed her.  

“Ssh,” she hissed under her breath, listening intently.

Anna frowned.  

Tati rolled soundlessly off of her and threw Anna's dressing gown on.  

Anna's frown deepened.  “Regina?” she mouthed at Tati.

Tati was skeptical.  She looked quickly around the room, casting about for anything to weaponize, and settled on a bottle of perfume on Anna's vanity.  Anna gave her a confused look.

“Little bear, have you gotten up?” Tati called.   _Be wise, understand that this question means that I hear movement in the house, and if you’re in bed, you know it isn’t you._

No answer.  She was certain she heard movement on the other side of the door, quiet and professional.  

“Listen to me,” she whispered into Anna's ear, barely audible.  “You stay in here, alright? You don't come out till I say it's okay, yes?”

Anna looked at her as though she was barking mad, but stayed in the bed, the sheet pulled up over her knees, which she had drawn up to her chest.

Tati inched closer to the door, peering through the crack out into the living room.  She felt the cool draft of air whisper on her face as she looked out.  She saw one shape in the living room, a second in the doorway to the kitchen.  At least two.  

Her heartbeat had become suddenly loud, banging in her ears.  She hoped that she had taught Regina enough.  She crushed the sound of her pulse down to nothing, and thought for a moment.  She had weapons in her purse on the coffee table; pistol, knife, knuckledusters.  She only needed to surprise the shadowy figures long enough to get to it.  She had called out, so now they knew where she was.  She had to assume that they were positioning themselves to meet her as she came out the bedroom door.  She also would be safest assuming that there was a third man behind the door.

Luckily, the door opened outwards.  

She crouched down, kicked it open and somersaulted across the floor to the coffee table.  She heard the grunt of the door making impact in the face of a human being; indeed, there had been a third man behind it.   _They only sent three men to grab me,_ she thought dryly, _I wonder who they think they're after._

She was aware of the sound of him falling backwards into the table by the window, and saw in her periphery a brown suit, a fedora.  She snapped into a crouch and, finding herself at the feet of the second man, a beefy slab of a man in a grey suit, looked up and sprayed him in the eyes with Anna’s perfume.  He groaned in pain, grabbing at his eyes, so she gave him a hard shot to the groin, and then flung the heavy glass perfume bottle at the third man, a narrow-shouldered creeper in a black suit who stood in the kitchen doorway.  It cracked him in the forehead.

She saw him swoon against the doorframe. Her eyes picked up the gun in his belt, and that he hadn't had it drawn.  So this was meant to be a clean, quiet grab.

Or kill.

Her eyes quickly tagged each of them; Brown Suit, Creeper, Slab.  It always worked better when her targets had names.

The Slab, who now reeked of Anna’s perfume, was doubled over on her.  The Brown Suit had regained his foot and was hurling a knife at her.  She yanked the Slab down toward her and flipped him over her head.  She heard another strangled cry of pain as the knife hurtling at her lodged itself in his back.

These men were trained, but hardly her equals.  They were as nondescript as the shapeless cut of their suits, their methods professional but not highly polished.

She sprang up, using the hunched over body of the Slab to get a little extra height and then leapt up, hurtling through the air at the Creeper in the kitchen doorjamb, executing a flawless flip that landed her with her thighs to his shoulders, sending him to the ground and allowing her to snap his neck between her knees in the process.  She would worry about what to do with the bodies later.  She pulled a knife and some knuckle dusters from one of his pockets and wheeled on the other two.  

The Brown Suit who had thrown the knife was pulling it from the Slab’s back and handing it to him.  They split off from each other in an obvious attempt to approach her from opposing sides.  She dropped into a crouch, rolled under the legs of the Brown Suit, and elbowed him in the back of the head, then kicked his legs out from under him and leapt lightly over him to finish dealing with the other one.  She had to give the Slab some grudging credit, even as injured as he was, he was still fighting on.  He lunged at her with the knife, which she caught on the brass knuckles, and sent him reeling backwards into the coffee table with a kick to the chest.  He fell and struck his head against the side of it.  He seemed to have been momentarily slowed down by it, this time.

The Brown Suit was back on his feet, lunging at her with determined ferocity.  He was obviously the best of the three.  They exchanged blows for a few moments, none of which landed.  And then suddenly, his face contorted, he gave a strangled cry of pain, and sank to his knees.

Behind him stood Regina, holding the small knife that Tati had given her.  It appeared she had been paying attention during her instruction periods, after all.

She had slashed the tendons at the backs of his knees.  She could see the blood, even in the dark, staining the brown wool of his suit pants.  No more standing or walking for this one, she thought.  She watched Regina then knee him in the back of the head, and then kick him over and over in the face, until blood started coming out of his mouth and he collapsed onto the floor.  Regina was ready to continue kicking, her small frame shaking.

Tati glanced over her shoulder.  The Slab was still groaning on the floor next to the coffee table.  She put a hand on Regina’s shoulder.

“That’s enough,” she told her calmly.

The little girl’s face was an unreadable mask, save for the tears in her eyes.  She stood shaking, holding the knife, watching him cough and spit blood.  

“You should have stayed in the room,” Tati said.  

“He wanted to kill you,” Regina choked quietly.

“But he wouldn’t have,” Tati assured her, her hand still on the little girl’s shoulder.  “I’m better than him.”

Tati lifted Regina’s chin, and stared into her eyes.  It was good, she thought, that Regina knew how to protect herself, that she was displaying cunning, skill… and yet… Tati had not killed until she was twelve, until Anya.  Regina was too young for that.  Tati knew she was going to make many mistakes, many wrong choices in Regina’s care and training, but she would not turn her into a monster.  And at the most basic level, she was displeased that her young charge had inserted herself into danger needlessly.  

The fact that Regina had done this out of a desire to protect her gave her a taste of some other unfamiliar feeling that she would have to try to sort out later.

“Go sit down,” she ordered, pointing to the couch.  “I’m going to take care of him.”  

Regina obeyed.  Tati knelt down, took the man’s head between her hands, and quickly snapped his neck.  He stopped coughing and spitting.  She let head drop to the floor.

She left Regina sitting on the couch as she took the remaining man, dragged him up off the floor and deposited him into a kitchen chair.   She found the scarf she’d left there earlier, and tied his hands behind his back, although he hardly seemed to need it.  She pulled a chair up next to him and smiled.  “They only sent three of you,” she said in Russian.

He lifted his head and looked at her, eyes bleary.  

“You know who I am?”

He shook his head.  “High value,” he answered in Russian.  “That’s all we were told.”

“I’m a Red Room agent,” she told him, still smiling coldly, “and it’s to your misfortune if you don’t know what that means.”

He didn’t answer.  But his eyes said two things: that he knew what it meant, and that it was new information.

She took up a kitchen knife and showed it to him.  “So, you want to tell me?  You’re SSR?  Or Leviathan?  Or KGB?  You’re protecting Koslova?”  She slid the dull side of the blade down his cheek.  “Or, maybe you just want me to start cutting things off?”

“Leviathan is coming,” he rasped brokenly, and then she saw, too late, his jaw clench, and heard the sound of something crunch between his back teeth, and then saw a wave of white foam come pouring from his mouth as he convulsed to his death in the chair.  Cyanide capsule. Damnit.

She shook her head.  A waste.  No new information, and three bodies to dispose of.  And no more time to waste.  They had to leave now.

She walked back into the living room and found Regina sitting, silent and pale on the couch where she’d left her, and Anna standing in the bedroom doorway, hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face.

“What did you see?”  Tati asked.

Anna shook her head.  “Everything.  I saw everything.  You’re not dancers.”

Tati tried to reason with her. “Anna, they would have killed all three of us.”

“Why?  Why do they want to kill you?  Who are you, really?  What kind of monster have I been bringing to my bed?”

Tati felt something twist inside her when Anna said this.  “It’s too much to explain, Anna, and the less you know, the safer you are.  But … If I am a monster… I’m on your side.”  

Anna ran past her to the bathroom.  Tati could hear the sounds of her vomiting.

 

***

 

Anna was ashen as Tati argued for disposing of the bodies.  She wouldn’t take part in such a thing.  She wanted the police.

“This isn’t for the police,” Tati had tried to explain calmly.

“Who is for, then?”  Anna demanded.

Tati thought.  “The SSR.  Call the police if you want, but you need to tell them you think these men are Russian spies.”

“Are they?”

Tati nodded.  “They are.”

“And why were they trying to kill you?”

Tati paused.  “Because I’m trying to stop them from doing very bad things.”

Anna didn’t believe her, but she didn’t have anything else to work with, so she listened and watched.  She seemed unsettled at how businesslike Tati was about this.

She strode into the living room, went into her duffel bag and dropped a few of items on the kitchen table; a couple of file folders, a brooch, her old room key from the Griffith.  “You can tell them I was here.  Not the Prague police, my name won’t mean anything to them, but the SSR, when they come  --and they will come-- will be very interested to know that you encountered Dottie Underwood.”  

Anna looked at her, trying to comprehend what she was being told.  “Dottie?  So is that your real name or your spy name?”

Tati’s chest squeezed in on itself for a moment.  “It’s complicated.”  

“You say that a lot.”

She stepped a little closer.  “It’s who I needed to be to be able to be with you.”

Anna stepped back.  “Don’t touch me.”

Tati’s stomach turned over at seeing Anna recoil from her.  “I’m sorry-” she began, but Anna cut her off.

“Don’t,”  Anna answered, her voice dead and cold.  “Just get out of here.”


	5. How to Philosophize With A Hammer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tati and Regina make their way to Greece and run into an old friend.

Regina sat beside Tati, the train’s rocking lulling her to sleep despite the loud rumble of its wheels on the rails.  They’d escaped Prague stowed away in the bottom of a small fishing boat that took them down the Vlatva to a small town in Austria, where they got a hotel room, dyed their hair black, cut Regina’s, and bought her some boy’s clothing.  To keep Regina calm while they were curled up in the cramped bottom of the boat, Tati recited her the story of Snow White several times, which she’d had drummed into her over and over in the Red Room as part of training her to be sufficiently American.  

As Tati had rifled through their duffle bag in the hotel, she had pulled out the copy of “Pat the Bunny” from Anna’s place.  She felt something she couldn't name and it frustrated her.  “Regina!” she scolded.  “Why did you take this?”

Regina was stone-still, curled up on the bed. She looked pale and exhausted.  The trip had not agreed with her.   “I didn't take it,” she said, her voice very tiny.  

Tati didn't believe her, but Regina maintained her innocence.  It could only mean that despite everything, Anna had slipped it into their bag.  Tati’s chest ached, dull and hollow, but she brushed it aside.  They had to keep moving.  Nevertheless, they stopped in the town’s little bookstore and Tati selected a few books of fairy tales and the like, that she hoped would be suitable for Regina.

They then began the long series of trains down to Greece.  

Regina’s French and English weren't yet good enough for them to pose as French or American, so for now they were still going to have to remain Russian, but it was best if they were not dancers for a while. The SSR would be looking for a pair of mother and child dancers. Their town in Russia, she decided, had been leveled during the war, and they were heading to Greece for Tati to find work as a maid in one of the resort islands.

She looked down at Regina, who had slumped over in her seat, and felt the weight of her little head against her shoulder.  She was dressed in knickers, a newsboy cap, and a sweater vest.  She made a handsome little boy, Tati decided.  Another year or two would bring puberty and they wouldn't be able to get away with this, but for now, it was good.  Tati was Katerina, and Regina’s name was Vassy, she had papers to prove it, and they could have been any attractive young mother and her little boy, traveling together.

“Tati?” Regina asked sleepily.

“That's Mama to you, little bear,” Tati corrected her quietly.  “We’re in public.”

“Mmm,” Regina mumbled.  “Mama?”

“Yes, Vassy?”

A long pause, in which Tati wondered if Regina had fallen back to sleep.  Then, “Why couldn't we stay with Anna?”

“You know why,” Tati said in a very low voice. “It wasn't safe for her.  And we have things to do.”

Another long, sleepy pause.  “I don't understand why we have to do the things.”

Tati felt a pang of guilt.  She should have left Regina with Anna, she thought.  This wasn't her fight, not really.  Regina had never become the property of Leviathan.  She should have left the little girl with a warm, lovely young woman who was clearly cut out for leading the sort of “normal” life that included caring for a little girl in the way that “normal” people did it.  Someone who knew what to do with a little girl's tooth when it fell out, and that you were supposed to read bedtime stories to her at night.

But Regina felt like hers.  It has only been a few months by this time but, blood or not, it would feel strange and wrong without the little one at her side.  

“Because, if I don't do the things, I don't know if anyone else will,” she answered finally.  “And where I go, you go too.”

Another long pause, but Tati knew this was only Regina considering this before asking another question.  Probably one Tati didn't feel like answering.

“Mama, I miss Anna.”

Tati swallowed hard.  “I do too, Vassy.”  Awkwardly, she patted Regina on her capped head.  “Maybe we’ll go back one day.”

Regina nestled her cheek further into Tati’s shoulder and fell back to sleep.  Tati furrowed her brow, gazing down at this little creature that she didn't know what to do with but couldn't let go of, opened her battered copy of Anna Karenina, and read it in fits and starts all the way down to Thessaloniki.

_“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts…”_

  


***

 

From Thessaloniki, they took a boat down to Mykonos.  Nothing fancy, but it would get them there.  And this time, they didn't have to stow away in the bottom to avoid detection, so Regina got to spend time on the deck, staring at the sea, which she had never seen, and wondering at the vivid blue of the sky, and the warmth of the Greek sun on her face.  It was the most childlike Regina had ever seemed.

And as they sat together in the warm sun, feeling the breezes on their cheeks and having awkward practice conversations in English, the other half of Tati’s mind was already in Mykonos.  It wasn't that big a place, but Koslova could be anywhere in it.  

But perhaps she could get Koslova, or her people at least, to come to her.  

  


*****

 

After a few hours of watching the place, Tati was satisfied that it was unoccupied at the moment, and that whatever maintenance staff might come round occasionally could be easily avoided.  So after the sun set, she and Regina simply strolled up the white sands of the beach, and Tati broke in through one of the rear terrace doors of Howard Stark’s villa on Platis Gialos.

“Are we here to steal something?” Regina asked.

“Possibly,” Tati answered thoughtfully, scanning the massive room.  The place was tastefully appointed with a lot of deep blues and white; open and airy, with a high, vaulted ceiling, and modern furnishings balanced with traditional Greek artwork and pottery.  It was too tasteful, she decided, he had to have hired a decorator.  “But let's see what there is to eat.”

After meandering through what seemed like endless wide-open hallways, they found a kitchen, which even if it wasn't THE kitchen, was low-key stylish in its own way, decked out with up to the minute white ceramic-finished appliances, and had an icebox containing the makings of an acceptable approximation of a proper Greek salad, including those two items which Tati had always found dubious; stuffed grape leaves and anchovies.  Regina in her fascination crammed some of each into her mouth and announced that she preferred the anchovies to the grape leaves, which she said felt like mushy paper in her mouth.  Tati decided not to ask why Regina had a frame of reference for what eating paper felt like.

Tati sat at the small kitchen table and ate her food while Regina shuffled away to find a bathroom.  She wasn’t sure what she would accomplish here, though at minimum it was a comfortable place to stay.  She’d have to search the place and see if he had a lab or a vault or anything worth her trouble.  Meanwhile, they could spend a few days on the beach, she thought.  It had been a long time on the run, now.  She could spare them a few days to recover from their trip.  

She realized that the last time she’d enjoyed the beach had been with Howard Stark, actually, on the French Riviera.  She shuddered at the thought.  It would be much less disagreeable to spend a few days in the warm sea air with Regina, swimming in the Aegean and and sunning themselves on the well-appointed terrace.  

They spent a few days doing exactly this.  Howard’s beach was entirely private so they didn’t trouble themselves with swimwear; they just dove into the warm, lapis-blue water, and Tati taught Regina how to float on the gentle waves that lapped at the white sand at the water’s edge.  By their second day, she had mastered a decent backstroke.  They borrowed the sumptuous maroon Aston Martin in the garage and made a trip into town, and Tati bought them some food at the open-air market: some incredibly fresh fish wrapped in paper, a block of halloumi, the mild, salty local cheese, and links of loukaniko sausage to grill along with it.  They would enjoy crusty Greek bread from the baker’s stall.  

Tati had been trained to disregard the pleasures of the flesh, but food had been one of those small things she’d been able to get away with.  It was a little chink in the stone wall that the Red Room had forced her to build around her heart.  One had to eat, after all.  It might as well taste good.  

And she would be damned if she would deny Regina the opportunity to enjoy those pleasures.  They had a mission, to be sure, but that was no excuse to not to eat well, to taste and savor the unique flavors of their journey.  She tried to explain this as they took a needlessly circuitous route home from the market, riding along some of the winding roads near the shore and enjoying the sea breezes through the open window.  Regina sat back in her seat with her eyes closed, and the sun on her face, and Tati wasn’t sure if she was listening.

But maybe, maybe she was just savoring.

  
  


****

  


On their third afternoon, they were sunning themselves on the terrace, face down on lounge chairs opened flat.  Tati was naked, Regina in her shorts.  In the brief time that they’d been here, both their skins had become a lovely golden brown, and they stood out less among the crowds in town.  

Regina shuffled inside to get a drink of water.  Tati had been searching Howard’s closets and hallways, searching for what, she wasn’t sure, but she hadn’t found it yet.  

She heard a car pull up in front of the villa.  She wasn’t happy about that.  She glanced next to the chair.  Her towel, and, naturally, her pistol.  Good enough, she decided.  If it was help, she could just claim to be one of Mr. Stark’s girlfriends.  If it was Howard himself, well… so much the better.  

She turned over, pulled the chair up into sitting position, and sat back in it, casual and relaxed.  She pulled the towel over herself just enough to cover up the bits that would be interesting to Howard.  She listened to the opening of the door, listened with a cool, quiet smile to the approaching footsteps.  The terrace door swung outward a bit more, and onto the terrace, emerged Howard Stark in a loud Hawaiian shirt.

His eyes settled on her immediately.  “Well, hello,” he said, surprised but not missing a beat.  “I didn’t realize when I bought this place that it came with a beautiful dame.”

She held that chilly little smile and continued gazing right at his face.  He didn’t recognize her.   _Men,_ she thought disdainfully.  “Mr. Stark,” she scolded with a teasing note in her voice, “you don’t remember me?”

He grinned.  “I hope you’re not mad, sweetheart.  Just because I don’t remember ya doesn’t mean I don’t like ya.”

“We spent a lovely weekend together on the French Riviera?”

His smile was still broad, but a blankness in his eyes told her he still didn’t recognize her.

At this moment, Regina emerged from behind him, holding two glasses of water.  “Mama?  Who’s this man?”

Tati smiled, not breaking her eye contact with Howard.

His smile suddenly became a little nervous.  “Hey now,” he began, sounding more agitated, “you’re, uh, not here to tell me this little fella’s mine, are you?”

Tati snorted.  “No, he’s not yours.  You still don’t recognize me?”

He shook his head.

“I kidnapped you in New York and cold-cocked you twice in the space of two hours?”

He shook his head.  “Nope, still drawing a blank.”  He paused.  “Wait.... Ida!” he shouted triumphantly.  “Right?”

She rolled her eyes.  “That’s not my name anymore.  But yes.”

“So, uh, are you shacking up at my place for a reason, Miss Not-Ida-Anymore?”

She sighed.  “I’ll get to the point.  I know that Leviathan is hiding a very important agent of theirs here in Mykonos.  You need to help me draw them out.”

“Hey, hey now,” he objected.  “I’m the only one who gets to decide when I get used as bait or not.”

“Not today, you don’t.”

“Mama, is he a bad man?” Regina asked.

“No, Vassy, just a short and unattractive one.”

“Hey now!  You didn’t seem to–” Howard began to protest.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Tati interrupted.  “I’m a spy, remember?”

Howard’s mouth snapped shut.

“No more questions, Vassy, till Mama and Mr. Stark are done talking.”

Regina nodded.  

“Shouldn’t I … shouldn’t I bring Peggy in on this?” Howard ventured.

“No,” Tati said firmly.  “She can’t be connected to my activities.  She’s given me too much help already.”

“But I’m expendable,” he observed.

“Yes.”

“So, uh, what’s in it for me?”

“Well, you can help me, and I can ... not kill you.”

Howard gave her a wry look.  “What a deal.”

“And don’t get any ideas about maneuvering on my son.  I’m training him myself and he’s as capable of killing you as I am.”

Howard glanced between her and Regina.  Clearly he didn’t relish the prospect of death at all, much less at the hands of an eight year old.  

“No police, no SSR.  You help us, I leave you alone for good.  You have my word you’ll never see me again.”

“The word of a spy, how comforting.”  

Dottie grew impatient.  “Take it or leave it, Stark.  If you’re refusing to help me, then you’re no use to me anyway and I have no real issue with killing you.  You agree to help, and you don’t pull any funny business, you get the satisfaction of having played a role in dismantling the agency responsible for creating women like me.  And isn’t that worth something to your ego?”

If there was one thing you could count on in this world, it was that men like Howard needed to feel important, more desperately than anything else.  “Could I tell people?”

“Of course not.”  She paused, and then amended, “You could tell Peggy.  After it’s over.”

Howard nodded.  “Well, what do you have in mind?”

Tati patted a nearby lounge chair.  “Let me explain.”

 


	6. Butterfly Under Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tati begins moving the pieces and gets closer to her target. The closeness of her quarry unearths memories.

_“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”_

_–Anna Karenina_

  


Tati knew that Stark couldn’t be trusted.  She considered reviving Ida from the recesses of her mind, as she’d been so effective at getting what she wanted out of him, but she passed on that idea.  She didn’t entirely know who Tatiana Urakova was, but she knew she never wanted to be that Ida Emke person again.   It didn’t even nauseate her so much as it was every cell in her body simply declaring, “No.”

Nevertheless, she wasn’t disposed to be too inhumane at the moment.  She was hungry, and suspected he was too, having just gotten in from wherever.  She stood, wrapped the towel around herself, and beckoned him and Regina to follow her into the house.  She stopped in the bedroom that she and Regina had been sleeping in and retrieved a bathrobe, and changed into it without taking much trouble to hide anything from him.  She didn’t care what he saw.  He was stupid, and he was never going to get any of it again, anyway.  She slipped Regina’s little pistol into the pocket of her shorts, and they made their way down to the staff kitchen, where the refrigerator held the lountza and halloumi that she’d bought at the market, and the big round loaf of crusty bread sat waiting in the basket on the countertop.

“It’s lunchtime for us,” she told him, and without any further conversation, she began heating up a cast iron skillet for the sausage, another to grill the bread, and then cutting the stringy, salty halloumi with deadly precision, slice after paper-thin slice, in pointed, deliberate silence.

Howard looked at Regina.  “Vassy, your mom always this chatty?” he asked.

“He only speaks Russian,” Tati informed him flatly.  “I’m teaching him French and English but he’s not conversational yet.”

“Heh,” Howard responded.  “Well, I’m a little rusty, but let’s see what I remember…”  He screwed up his face for a minute, clearly scraping vague memories into sentences.  Then he turned to Regina and asked her in broken Russian, “Do you like to read books?”

Regina nodded.

He soldiered on valiantly.  “I have big book-room, upstairs.  Maybe you see it?”  He was obviously not able to come up with "library".

Regina shook her head.  They had wandered the place in the few days that they’d been here, but somehow had not encountered the library.  

“You like to book about what?” he asked.  He was clearly reaching the near-end of his limited language skills.  

Tati watched carefully.  Regina answered after a moment, “I would like to read about the ocean,” she decided.  

“After lunch,” Tati snapped.  Under no circumstances was Regina wandering upstairs with him unaccompanied.  She placed the lountza slices onto the skillet and they made a gorgeous sizzling sound when they hit the little bit of olive oil in the pan.  The smell of the searing ham hit the air immediately.

She was aware of Howard watching her slice the bread just so, with the same precision, and she smiled.  He knew exactly how deadly she was, for all his pretenses of not remembering her.  “Smells pretty good,” he told her with a grin.  But she could smell his anxiousness underneath it.

“Where are the Russians in Mykonos?” she asked him as she flipped the sizzling ham with a spatula.  She knew she could turn her back on him because after Prague, she trusted Regina to look out for her.

“In Mykonos?” he repeated incredulously.  “There aren’t any.  There are a handful in Thessaloniki, in Athens, and maybe Crete, that came down here about twenty five years ago after you guys had that Civil War thing.  But there’s no Russian community in Mykonos.”

She placed the six slices of bread on the other skillet and remained silent while they crisped on one side, then the other.  At last, she said,  “I didn’t say a Russian community in Mykonos.  I said Russians.”

Stark had nothing to say about that at first.  He got up, slowly.  Tati felt the hairs on the back of her neck automatically stand up, registering his movement.  She was peripherally aware of Regina changing her posture to keep him under tight watch.  He strolled over to the window and picked up a thick, hardcover book.  “Now you know… I’ve got this one down here.  There’s a lot of pictures in it, so you might like it, Vassy.”  Tati laid the slices of cheese on top of the grilling bread and watched them melt.  She turned around and saw Howard set the book in front of Regina.  “It’s about Greek boats and fishing culture.  Lotta pictures.”  He flipped it open and Tati watched as Regina scanned him carefully first, then flipped through to look at the different black and white photos of various greek fishing boats as well as diagrams of how they worked and the types of fishing that were done with each.

Tati turned from the stove and assembled three sandwiches on separate plates and set them down on the counter where Regina and Stark were seated.  “I don’t suppose you have any thousand dollar bottles of red wine to go with these?” she inquired.  

“Yeah, if you wanna go with the cheap stuff,” he retorted.  He reached down below the counter and produced a dark green bottle.  “Eighteen ninety five Chateau Labisse, two grand and worth it.”  Tati gave him a tight, mirthless smile and he pulled a corkscrew from a drawer in front of him.  Regina rearranged on her stool, watching him carefully.

“I’ll do that,”  Tati decided, and took the bottle and corkscrew from him.  She popped the cork and pulled three wine glasses from the cupboard.  Two, she filled with wine, and one she filled with milk from the icebox.

“Going for the hard stuff today, Vassy?” Stark joked as Tati set the sandwich and the milk in front of Regina.  Regina looked at him curiously, but said nothing and set to her sandwich with careful little bites.

Tati gave her full attention to Stark, now, as they exchanged stares and Tati smelled his anxious sweat even through the pungent smell of the sandwiches.  Her smirk was small, chilly, casually murderous.  “So.  Let’s try this again, Howard.  Where would I find Russians in Mykonos?”

He ran his hand over his hair, smoothing it.  “Well, I can’t say for sure, but your two best bets are probably the docks, and some of low-rent bars on the north shore where a lot of the help go to drink.”

 _The help.  That’s what we are here,_ she thought. _The help._

She was better than that.  Her Regina was better than that.

  


  
****

  


Howard’s job was simple: go to a couple of those bars, act drunk-ish, order himself some ouzo, and boast about the gorgeous Russian woman shacked up at his place.  Be sure to include a very accurate description, and a few odd, distinguishing details that would point back to her.  Koslova would be looking out for her; they wouldn’t have bothered to hide her here if they hadn’t known Tati was coming for her in the first place.  If there were any Russians here, the news of her arrival would find its way back to her target quickly enough.

Howard was less than pleased that he was essentially inviting a particularly violent stripe of Russian spy to descend upon his house, but Tati was giving him little choice, and he preferred at least a fifty fifty chance of living through this to simply being iced by Tati and her “son.”

And so, their watch began.  The slow drip of time at Howard’s villa, while he paced the halls, perpetually aware of cold blue eyes on him at all times.  Tati’s mind ventured into peeling back the curtain that usually remained unbreached.  The prospect of Koslova being this close was rattling things open.  That doctor had been the mastermind, but Koslova had executed his brutal plans.  Koslova made her murder her only friend, made her pull out her own teeth and rip out her own nails.  Her memory of those things was oddly detached; she suddenly recalled doing them very clearly, hearing the ripping sounds of flesh, seeing and tasting blood, and the strangled sounds she made.  The crunch of her own fingers breaking under a hammer.  She became reflective.  She remembered that it had been agony, but she remembered it as it if it were a fact told to her, not something that she had lived.  Her relationship with that pain was not unlike staring at a butterfly under glass.

It was not one that she wanted Regina to have.  But after a moment’s consideration, she realized couldn’t quite work out what she wanted her to have instead.  She pushed thoughts of Anna out of her mind; of Anna reading to Regina, Anna slipping candies under Regina’s pillow.   _Anna,_ Tati’s body thought, and she tamped it down before it could tell her anything more.

  


********

  


Late in the night, Regina sat watch outside Howard’s door and Tati lay in bed, unable to sleep.  Regina was quietly looking through the book of Greek fishing boats, small pistol stowed in her waistband.  Tati heard the terrace doors open.  Good.  She listened for a moment.  Only one set of footsteps.  Had they learned nothing from Prague?

And unlike Prague, she was armed and ready this time.  She moved soundlessly down the hall in her dressing gown, to the railing at the top of the stairs, her pistol cocked and her finger itching to pull the trigger.  She saw the man’s shape moving through the foyer, glancing around and trying to get its bearings in the dark.  She aimed her weapon and shot, once through the shoulder, close enough to the vital stuff to give him a good scare.  He dropped his gun and grabbed at the place on his clothes where the dark, sticky blood was staining through.  She leapt down and landed lightly a few feet in front of him, pistol-whipped him across the head once and watched him fall with a satisfying thud.  Too easy.

By the time he awoke, she’d tied him to a kitchen chair.  She’d already dug around in his slackened mouth while it was hanging open during his little nap.  Disgusting.  But she found and removed a cyanide capsule tucked in the back, between his cheek and gum.  In every way, this would not be a repeat of Prague.

She smiled cruelly at him when he came to, recognizing as she stood in front of him the alarm in his expression when he realized his mouth’s cargo had been stolen.  She knew she was beautiful and terrifying when she smiled this way.

“That’s right,” she told him in Russian.  “You don’t get to bite your little pill and die in Howard Stark’s chair without telling me everything.”

He looked at her, wild-eyed.  He clearly knew who she was and how dangerous she was.  

She paced back and forth a little, casually, as she spoke.  Her footfalls were muted because she walked on a thick layer of canvas sheeting which was dusted generously with quicklime.  Having had at least some of the same training she did, he would know that this was to prevent a mess and make for quick and easy disposal of his body after she was through torturing and killing him.  “Now, Koslova sent you to kill me, hm?  It’s alright, I already know..  But you… clearly… are not going to succeed tonight.”  She gestured to a selection of sharp objects spread on a table beside her.  “Now, we are going to keep this very simple, because I’m a busy woman.  I have a very long list of people to kill and you’re not even on it.”

He writhed against his bonds but it was no use.  She had secured him tightly.

“You’re going to die.  Nothing you say or do now is going to change this.  However, it can be slow and miserable, or it can be quick and painless.  That is entirely up to you.  You tell me where I can find Koslova, you get a bullet to the head.  No fuss.  A good, clean soldier’s death.  You drag this out, I will mutilate you so badly your own mother won’t recognize you.”

She sat down in another chair a foot in front of him.  “Now.  Let’s exchange names, I’m sure you know mine already, yes?”

He nodded.  “Dottie Underwood.”

Her face clouded over, and she could see the terror in his eyes increase by tenfold.  “That is not my name anymore.  That is a name that they gave me, for a person who no longer exists.”  She stared at him, leaning a little closer, her gaze picking every stray fear off the back of his skull, her nostrils full of the stink of his terror sweat.  She smiled at him again, enjoying herself too thoroughly.  “You can call me Tatiana.  Now what can I call you?”

After a moment in which he seemed to be finding enough saliva in his mouth to make words, he said, “Andreyushkin.”

Tati’s smile grew even broader.  “Like Pakhomy Andreyushkin?”

He nodded silently.

“Are you a revolutionary, Andreyushkin?”

He shook his head.

“No, you wouldn’t be, would you.”  She sighed, giving her voice something close to a disappointed tone.  “You must be a very good assassin if they sent you here to kill me all by yourself.”

He didn’t answer.

“Tell me, Andreyushkin, where is she?”

He looked between her and the objects on the table.

“K-Kalo Livadi,” he stammered.  “Ten kilometers east of Chora.”

Tati nodded thoughtfully.  “And where exactly?”

“A villa, in the woods, overlooking the beach.  You won’t miss it.  It’s marked.”

“Marked how?”

“You know how.”

She nodded.  “I see.”  She took a large cleaver and held it near to his ear.  “Now, I’m going to go look for her there, Andreyushkin.  If you’ve lied to me, then I will come back here and this ear will be the first of many things you will lose before I’m through with you.  So.  Before I borrow one of Mr. Stark’s lovely, lovely cars, are you sure that’s where I’ll find her?”  She gripped his ear with her other hand and lightly grazed the edge of the blade along the skin where the ear attached to his scalp.

“Yes!  Yes!”  he cried desperately.

She shook her head.  “You’re too easy.  She’d be very disappointed.”

She struck him again with her pistol, and he slumped forward, unconscious, in his chair.

She had Koslova’s location.  By morning, she would have her head.  

 


	7. Goodnight, Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dottie finds her target in Greece.

_"Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed."_ _–Anna Karenina._  


 

“You know,” Howard Stark pointed out as he sat cuffed in the back seat of his own Aston Martin, “that guy was probably a setup.  They knew you were coming, they sent some bush-leaguer to give up your target and now you’re going over there.  You’re probably walking into a trap, you realize that, right?”

“I know that.”  Tati looked at him via the rearview mirror, blue eyes like ice.  “What’s the matter, Howard?  Don’t you have faith in my skills?”

“Sure I do.”  He was twitching, fidgeting in his seat.  “But I’d be a liar if I said I was thrilled about being found cuffed up in the back seat of this car by a bunch of Russian assassins.”

She gave him a cold little smile.  “Well, then, you’d better get emotionally invested in my success.”

“I am, I am,” he answered unconvincingly, still fidgeting.

“What’s wrong with you?”  Tati demanded after a moment of steering the car along the winding road through the unlit hills.  “Just sit still.”

He sighed.  “My nose is itching!” he admitted.

“It’s your own fault, wearing that stupid mustache.”  In Russian, she told Regina, “Scratch Mr. Stark’s nose for him, Vasy.”

Regina looked at Tati strangely for a moment.

“He says it itches.  I need him to sit still.”

The little girl nodded, turned to Howard, and scratched his nose for him.  He breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed into the soft, dark leather of the seat.  “Thank you, Vassy,” he breathed with an excess of drama.

Regina was dressed in her shorts and jacket with a little cap pulled over her serious little brow.

Howard was right.  It was probably a trap.  So, she would simply have to be better.  She didn’t like bringing Regina.  And she would have preferred to leave Howard back at his house, but she couldn’t have him contacting Peggy, authorities, or anyone else.  If he was going to be on this caper, she needed Regina to keep an eye on him.  It was that simple.  Even cuffed, he couldn’t be trusted alone in his own vehicle.  More than likely, it was probably equipped with a hidden radio or something else.    


She found a strange itch in the pit of her chest.  Koslova was close enough that Tati could taste the rankness of the Red Room’s hospital in the back of her throat.  The other cogs in that blood-soaked machine were satisfying enough to kill, but none so far had presented her with the kind of visceral thrill, the heightening of her senses, that she experienced now.  Those other kills had been strategic.  This one offered something much more sticky, much more human: vengeance.  She wrinkled her nose as if something stank.

She mused over the feeling as she drove up the winding hillside.  It had the potential to help her: heightened awareness.  It had the potential to harm: make her reckless, make her calculations erroneous.  She reached for the cold, the cold that she had learned in her training in the Red Room, pressed it against the hot, thudding feeling in her chest.  She would use the tools Koslova gave her to defeat her.    


The trees began to thin as they ascended the hill, the stars and thin crescent moon peeking in between the shadowy fingers of their branches.  She flicked off the headlights and slowed as they continued up, working slowly now to keep track of where the road was in the moonlight.  They would not be seen.  She could see the pale yellow lights of the villa flicker in between the trees.  Her heartbeat’s pace kept even, but it beat harder.  From her obstructed viewpoint, she reckoned the villa had two floors, maybe seven bedrooms if it was laid out similar to Stark’s place.  Gas lamps flickered on either side of a wide driveway.  Her eyes made out a wrought iron gate.  It was too dark to spot them at this distance with her naked eye, but she expected that there would be snipers on the roof.    


She stopped the car along the side of the road, and turned around to face Howard and Regina in the back.  “You will stay here,” she said in English.  “I will not be long.  Vassy will watch you.  Don’t be fooled by his size.  He’s quick, and just as capable of killing you as I am.”

Howard didn’t seem to need convincing.

Regina took her pistol out.  “Mama,” she said, “should I shoot him if he moves?”

Tati smiled.  “Yes, Vassy.”

Howard’s eyebrows lifted.    


Tati looked back at Howard.  “In Prague, Vassy slashed a man’s legs and stomped his head in.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it.  Not moving,” he answered crossly, and settled into the bucket seat.

Tati got out of the car.

She was in tactical gear.  All black.  It had been a while since she’d kitted up.  It felt good.  Familiar.  She circled round to the trunk and opened it to find her old familiar friends: a loaded sniper rifle, a Thompson for close combat, and several stick magazines which she loaded into her belt.  She strapped the Thompson across her back and carried the sniper, moving swiftly along the roadside.  She wouldn’t take the shortcut through the trees; the woods around a Leviathan safe house this size were likely to be littered with tripwires and small mines.  She strode up the road, stopped when she could clearly make out the individual lights of the gas lamps along the driveway.  She held up the sniper rifle, and took her first close look at the villa through its scope.    


She settled her scope on the gate.  Wrought into the iron was the heart shape, broken by the curving line.   _ If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never notice it,  _ she thought, but it was there.  Plain as day.  She trained her scope up to the rooftop.  Two snipers, at opposite ends of the roof.  She moved the scope back and forth between them where they stood at their posts, counted the number of heartbeats it took to get from one to the other.  Counting heartbeats.  It felt like home.  It felt like who she was.   _ One, two. _  Collateral damage on her way to Koslova.

The rifle’s recoil butted into her shoulder, pleasantly dull and hard.  She watched the first one crumple.

_ One, two. _

She watched the second one crumple.    


She ran up the road now.  She had killed.  Engagement had begun.  She clambered over the gate. By the time she had situated herself in the hedges along the outer gate, two grey suits came rushing out of the front door.    


_ One, two. _

She moved through the shadows toward the side of the house.  She didn’t like going into a place she hadn’t cased, but the scent of blood was in her nostrils now.  Whatever was in there, she could take.  Tati worshipped no god, but she had faith.  Faith that no killer alive was better than she was.  Faith brought her through the side window into a long hallway.  Faith snapped the necks of two more men.    


_ One, two. _

Faith emptied her magazines into a dozen more as they descended the stairs from the second floor.  She worked her way slowly down that long hall, propelled by that faith.  She felt no remorse, no grief for their deaths.  They served a monster and they would die for it.

Faith led her carefully to walk between their pooled blood.  She would leave no footprints on the wood.

Faith found her in an empty foyer, in a quiet house.  Blood sprayed on the white walls, a trail of bodies in her wake.  She listened, head cocked, for movement.  She heard none, nothing but the ticking of the grandfather’s clock in the hallway.    


She heard the spit of static as a speaker came to life somewhere within the walls.

“Well, done, Dottie Underwood,” came the familiar voice, Russian with a faint whiff of some other accent.  It bounced off the walls and echoed in the vast space.

“That’s not my name anymore, Koslova,” she responded, loud enough to be heard by Koslova’s microphones, wherever they were hidden.  “You took my name from me, and I have taken it back.”

She heard a strange wheezing sound, and realized that it was Koslova laughing. 

“I don’t recall you having a sense of humor,” she remarked.

“Well, you’re older now,”  Koslova answered.  “You took back your name.  Forgive me, but I find this funny.”

Tati glanced around.  She saw a library off the main hallway, so she slowly walked in, pistol in hand, continuing to converse with the voice of Koslova as it dripped malevolent disdain from every hidden speaker in every wall.  “Why is that?”  she asked.  “Since I’m older now, perhaps you can let me in on the joke?”

She was looking for a mechanism that would open the hidden door that would lead her into the hidden levels of this place, where Koslova sat watching her, mocking her.  And she knew Leviathan and their fondness for trapdoors behind bookshelves.

Koslova paused a long moment.  “Dottie Underwood is what you are.  What is the purpose to take back the name Tatiana Urakova?  She doesn’t exist.  The life she had doesn’t exist.  What can you possibly know about Tatiana?”

“More than you,” Tati answered.    


Her eyes scanned the books.  Rows of titles, all of them vaguely familiar but most of them she’d never read.    


“Tatiana was a malnourished child that we took from a failing farm near Volgograd.  But you are not Tatiana.  You are Dottie Underwood.  You are a killer.  Look at what you’ve left for me to clean up in that hallway.”

Tati’s lips curled into a humorless smile.  “Now,” she remarked, “that was funny.”   _ Tatiana enjoys food, and is learning to cook.  Tatiana is raising a child.  Tatiana likes peppermint candies and the circus and despises the sight of tigers in cages.  Tatiana likes sleeping with women.  Tatiana fell in love with Peggy Carter in New York, and then with Anna Gryzwacz in Prague.  Tatiana is already more than you think she is. _

Her eyes settled on a title.  Anna Karenina.  The young girl she’d been had left that book for her in that locker in Prague.  This had to be why.  She reached for it, and slowly pulled it out.

The entire bookshelf shifted.  It rolled forward, slowly.  There were some hydraulic sounds, and then the rumble of the bookshelf moving aside, opening onto a dimly lit stairway that led down.    


“Ah!” Koslova’s voice said, sounding strangely pleased.  “You found the book.”

Tati moved down the brushed metal steps, down into a large space lined with more brushed metal, and white tile, and along one wall, an assortment of screens offering various feeds from cameras upstairs and on the property.  Interesting, she noted.  The hallway was covered, the front door, the front gate, but not the side window where she’d entered.  Koslova hadn’t seen her coming until she’d entered the house.

Beside the wall with the screens sat a large, heavy metal door, sitting partway open.  It looked for all the world like a vault.  Beyond it was only blackness.

In front of the screens sat Koslova, smoking a cigarette, as pale and gaunt as Tati remembered her in her vague, flickering nightmares, but much, much smaller.  She could see from across the room the pulse in the woman’s neck, the sickening, hungry light in her eyes.  Tati wanted to watch that light go out.

“So,” Koslova said breezily.  “You’ve come home.”

Tati said nothing.

“You’ve been causing quite a lot of trouble,” she observed, and blew a puff of smoke before speaking more.

Tati knew better than to think she would plead for her life.  She also knew better than to think that all the men she’d mowed down upstairs were going to be the last line of defense.  “You made a monster,” she responded in a matter-of-fact tone.  “Why should it surprise you when your monster acts like a monster?”

Koslova grinned, her face crumpling and wrinkling in odd, asymmetrical ways.  “Because,  _ dorogaya _ , you are supposed to be  _ my _ monster.”

_ Dorogaya.   _ Tati tried not to let that word send a shudder of revulsion through her.  My dear, it meant.  Ivchenko had addressed her as such before unleashing her to commit atrocities.  And she had a sick feeling that it had been used other times, those times in the Red Room that her memory had been kind enough to keep submerged in blackness.

“I’m my own monster now,” Tati stated flatly.  “I kill for my own things.  My own reasons.  My own people.  I choose, now.  I’m no-one’s.”

“No, no,” Koslova corrected.  “You are no-ONE.”

Tati remained silent.    


“Dottie Underwood,” Koslova said, leaning forward in her seat.  “You need to accept that you are no-one but that.  That I made you.  Don’t you want to belong to something again?”

_ I belonged to Peggy,  _ she thought.  _  And Anna, if only for a while.  I belong to Regina now.   _ “Of course I do,” she answered.

“So then,” she went on, speaking through clouds of smoke, “sit down, and let’s straighten out all of those little broken bits.”  She stood up, walked to a metal table in the opposite corner, produced a syringe from a drawer, and started preparing it.  “You think you’re angry with me, but Ivchenko misused you, not me.  And we are going to start again.  You were nothing when we took you all of those years ago but now, you are something special, aren’t you?”    


Tati moved across the room in just a few quick steps.  She took Koslova by the throat and slammed her against the tile wall. “You are not putting any needles in me!” she hissed.  “Do I look like a fool to you?”  She ripped the syringe out of Koslova’s hand and sent it hurtling across the room.

“You tortured me,” she said more calmly, but she felt that itching in her chest again.  She reached desperately for the cold detachment she needed, but it eluded her grasp.  “You devised and executed a thousand different ways to hurt me.  You made me torture myself.  You injected me with so many serums and drugs it’s a miracle I’m not dead.  You cut me open and sterilized me.  You stood by and let them take everything out of me.  I’m not letting you do this do any more girls, do you understand me?”  Her voice was soft and even, but she was faintly aware that a hot tear was sliding down one of her cheeks.    


Koslova was choking, desperately straining for air.  Tati was watching her, pinning her in place and watching her slowly suffocate, a bit at a time.  No, it would not be quick like some of the others.  It would be slow, and she would relish it.  She would enjoy watching her struggle, and suffer, and die.  It was a shadow of what she deserved.  This was the only mother she remembered, this monster, and now she would rip its fingers out of her.

Suddenly, she was on her back on the tile floor.  A diminutive redhaired woman was astride her, with a knee pinned to her throat.

Koslova was leaning against the wall, coughing and gasping for air.

It had happened.  Tati had been so caught up in her vengeance, in her blood lust, that she had let her guard down.  Exactly as she’d feared she would.  She had been too caught up in watching Koslova die, she hadn’t even heard or felt this young woman slip through the open vault door, move silently up behind her, and sweep her legs out from under her.

“It is weakness,” Koslova taunted her around her still-gasping breaths.  “Your humanity, your feelings, being Tatiana… it is weakness!”

_ Tatiana has a child to return to, _ she thought, and flipped the small woman off of her and rolled to her feet.  She looked in the woman’s eyes, and realized that she was another graduate of the program.    


“You will never stop the work we do,” Koslova taunted her.  “Our roots go too deep.  We only get better each year at creating monsters.”

The girl was small, and looked painfully young to Tati’s eyes, but Tati saw the killer in her.  She was beautiful too, and athletic.  Another graduate of the dance program, no doubt.  And so, they danced.

Tati reached for her pistol but the girl kicked it from her hand and leapt toward her, feet first.  Tati moved aside and landed a blow in the girl’s side.  Like herself, the girl wasn’t slowed down by pain.  Tati knew it had been a good blow, but the girl was back at her without missing a beat.

_ One, two. _

Fists.  Feet.  Hands.  Throat.  They soared against each other, went low.  Leapt, flipped, slammed one another into one wall, then another.  Peggy had challenged her, but she hadn’t been trained the same way.  This... was much like fighting a mirror.  She knew the girl’s rhythms.  Punch, kick, duck, leap, punch.   _ One, two. _

“I told you,”  Koslova taunted her.  “We keep getting better at this, but you, Dottie Underwood, are still you.”

“You’re good,”  Dottie observed through shallow breaths as their punches rained down against each other’s, cancelling each other out.

“I’m better than you,” the girl answered with a smirk, and jumped up onto the metal table, grabbed the light fixture and propelled herself at Tati’s head.

The girl had her, for a moment, until Tati lifted herself off the floor and pulled the light fixture and the girl down.  The fixture crashed to the floor, it’s long white bulb shattering.  The girl was already moving lightly to the right, trying to come at her again.  Tati went in low.  She felt her palms and knees being pricked by broken glass but she didn’t care.  She knocked the girl back against the tile, pinned her there, drew her knife, held it to the girl’s throat.  __ And then stopped.  Dottie Underwood would have killed this girl.  Tatiana Urakova would prefer to rescue her.  To kill the men who served Leviathan voluntarily was no tragedy.  To kill this girl would be Tatiana failing her mission.  And, perhaps for the first time in her life, she hesitated.

_ Kill me, _ the girl’s eyes dared her.   _ I’m not afraid of you. _  Tati remembered being this girl, this little redhaired teenager with the fierce, dark eyes and limber frame, muscles like whipcords.  “You don’t have to be what she made you, you can be whatever you want,” she told her.    


“Koslova’s right,” the girl responded disdainfully, “your humanity has made you weak.  You’ve been away too long.”

She felt the girl’s knee rocket up into her stomach, and she stumbled back, the breath momentarily pushed from her body.  Maybe it was a mistake, trying to save this girl.  Maybe.    


“Finish this, Natasha,” Koslova shouted.    


Natasha. Tati wondered, as the girl’s boot hit her square in the chest, whether that was her name, or the name Koslova had given her after she scraped every shred of the girl’s soul out of her.  She barely had time to wonder this as she staggered backward, straight into the wall of screens, smashing a few of them.  She felt crunch of their glass giving way beneath her shoulder blades, her spine.  It stung.  She didn’t care.    


Natasha jumped up onto the steel table and prepared to leap on top of Tati.  She’d gotten hold of Tati’s knife somehow, or maybe it was her own.  Koslova had drawn a pistol and was pointing it toward Tati.  “It’s a shame, really,” Koslova sneered.  “You used to be my favorite.  And now you’re nothing but–”

_ BLAM! _

A red bloom appeared on the front of Koslova’s starched white blouse, just to the right of her heart.  The blood crept across her chest as she staggered back, clutching at the wound.  “Natasha…” she gasped.

The girl’s face was paralyzed for a moment, with something like horror.  Not for Koslova.  No, Tati knew, she could not possibly feel anything for the woman herself.  But nothing was more horrifying to an agent of the Red Room than failing her mission, and this small, fearsome girl had failed hers.  She was meant to protect Koslova, and she had failed.

She and Tati both looked up to the staircase and saw Regina, arm extended, squinting down the barrel of her little pistol, taking in the results of her handiwork.

“Vassy!” Tati gasped.   _ She shouldn’t be here. _

Tati’s eyes flicked over to where Natasha had been standing a moment ago, but she was no longer in that spot.  She saw the large, heavy vault door closing.  She’d been too slow.

She looked back up.  Regina had lowered her arm and was looking at her with concern.  “Mama?  Are you hurt?”

Tati now absorbed that Regina’s other hand was hanging onto Howard Stark’s jacket.  He was still cuffed.  Regina had come after her to make sure she was alright.  And she dragged Howard with her because she knew well enough that he couldn’t be left alone in the car.    


“I’m fine, Vassy,” she replied absently, and got to her feet.  Koslova was still alive.  She’d gone three shades of pale, her hand was covered with sticky, red blood.  The smell of it filled Tati’s nostrils.  Regina had wounded her grievously, but not killed her.  A strange little wave of relief washed over her.  Regina was still too young for her first kill.

She placed a gentle hand on Koslova’s cheek.  “Oksana,” she asked quietly, “where does that door go?”

Koslova gave a low, rattling groan.  “You’ll never catch her.”

“So it goes out?  Away?”

Koslova nodded weakly.    


“You’re wrong, you know,” Tati continued in Russian.  “You said my humanity was my weakness.  It’s not.” She pointed up to the steps, to Regina in her little shorts and cap and jacket.  “She understood that I was compromised, and came for me.  It was my humanity that shot you.”  She turned, glancing over her shoulder.  “Vassy, take Mr. Stark back upstairs, please.  I will be right behind you.”

Regina nodded obediently and walked back up the stairs, prodding Howard along with her pistol.  She dimly heard him muttering in complaint, “What are the odds that I’m going to get out of this night without blood on my shoes?”

Tati peered at Koslova.  The hot, itching feeling no longer plagued her chest.  Cool, calm settled inside her.  Something far more unbearable nibbled at the edge of her consciousness, but she would not converse with it now.  “My humanity shot you,” she repeated.  “And now…”  She recovered Koslova’s pistol off of the floor.  “...it will kill you.”    


She placed the nose of the gun between Koslova’s eyes.  The monster was sweating, eyes squeezed shut.  Tati felt nothing inside except winter.  Ice on the windows, clear and cold.  She squeezed the trigger, once, and then again.  _One, two._  She felt Koslova’s skull shatter, felt the light spray of blood on her own face, saw it paint an angry red blossom on the wall behind Koslova’s head.  She stood.  She pulled a folded black handkerchief from her back pocket, wiped the blood from her face as she looked at Koslova’s small, crumpled corpse.    


“Goodnight, monster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that it's been so long since I updated this. Thanks for your patience.


	8. Ça Ne Semble Pas Juste

_“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”_

_–Albert Camus, The Stranger_

 

Regina munched quietly on the remains of a buttery croissant, her eyes scanning the pages of a glossy magazine that was a few years old, pages splashed with images of the war.  Tati had dug it out of a cardboard box wedged in the back of a crawl space in the meager little apartment they shared in a quiet arrondissement populated mostly by immigrants.

She settled for a few moments on an image of a soldier raising the hammer and sickle flag on the roof of the Reichstag.  Tati had seen this image before, but it was probably new to Regina.  “Is this when we beat the Germans?” she asked after washing her breakfast down with milk.

Tati nodded, then amended.  “There were many victories before the end.  But that one was important.”

Regina flipped the page and there were a few more minutes of silence while she stared long and hard at another photo, this one of the mushroom cloud that had swallowed Hiroshima.  “It says this explosion destroyed the entire city, yes?”  The magazine was a French one, and Regina’s reading skills were coming along well now, but she still had to ask for help often.  However, their time in Paris was improving her comprehension much faster than expected.  The KGB had done right in choosing her; the little one was bright, a natural at picking up all the skills needed to become what they had planned for her to become.

“That’s right.”

Regina thought for a few minutes more as she examined the photograph.  The sounds of their poor quarter of Paris drifted through the cracked-open window; the laundry trucks thudding over the cobblestones, the street chatter in French, Arabic, and other tongues, and now, at ten in the morning, the church bells striking the hour from a few blocks away.  It had taken a little time for Tati to stop being reminded of Prague every time she heard them. 

“Ça ne semble juste,” said the little girl.   _It doesn’t seem right._

“Ça ne semble _pas_ juste,” Tati corrected her sentence structure.  “And it isn’t.  Now all of Russia is trying to scramble into the grand nuclear future.  Goddamn fools.  They’ll bankrupt their so-called morals _and_ their purse.”

Regina said nothing. 

They’d been in Paris for well nigh three months.  Regina’s training was continuing apace.  She didn’t know her own birthday, so Tati chose one for her:  May 17th, the date that Tati rescued her from the pimps in Nizhny-Novgorod.  So, by her reckoning, Regina must be nine by now.  They’d been together nearly a year.  Regina had grown tired of being a little boy, and so her hair was growing back.  It hung at an awkward length now, curling up just beneath her chin.  “You’ll miss being a little boy,” Tati warned her as she tied the elusive curls back with a silk bow.  “There are things that are harder to do in dresses.”

“I know that.  I don’t care,” Regina said flatly.  “I want my hair back.”  And that was that. The girl knew her own mind, Tati thought, with no small measure of pride.

Killing Koslova had been a big deal.  They were wise to lay low for a while, because Europe would be crawling with Leviathan and KGB looking for her.  Since she and Regina had last been seen as a mother and son, she supposed it was fine to let her be a little girl again.  So they settled into a quiet existence in an undertrafficked bit of Paris, supported by the money that she’d retrieved from the cache in Prague.  Tatiana taught Regina ballet and ballroom dancing and the little one had the instincts to both lead and follow.  They worked on her French and English, most especially her accent, trying to iron it out.  A perfect accent was more important than having a wide vocabulary: to avoid sticking out, it was better to have a few words down perfectly than be able to converse well, but with a noticeable accent.  An accent made you a curiosity, and the French and Americans, both burdened with severe cases of cultural exceptionalism, were sensitive to such things.

They’d left Mykonos in a hurry, stopping at Stark’s villa long enough for Tati to dispatch the assassin she’d left tied up in the downstairs kitchen and commandeer Stark’s sailboat to make their escape.  “Don’t worry,” she’d promised, and he could hardly protest.  “I’ll leave it at Thessaloniki if you want to go pick it up.” 

She did not ask Regina to help her with the task; dismembering a body for disposal was something she could learn when she got older.  As it was, Tati was less than pleased to have been so blinded by vengeance that she needed the little girl to shoot Koslova.  Even though it was not a kill shot, Tati had hoped that it would be a bit longer before it came to such things.  But then, Tati wasn’t teaching her these things for no reason.  She was teaching her because she expected she’d need them sooner or later, and she had.

Regina had been suspiciously implacable about it, only complaining that Mr. Stark would not shut up all the way back to the car.  She had no questions about who Koslova was or why Tati wanted to kill her.  She accepted Tati’s extremely simple explanations (“They are bad people and they will hurt us if I don’t get to them first.”) and didn’t want to talk about what, if anything, she thought about putting a bullet into the scientist who had threatened Tati’s life.

“It’s good that you didn’t kill her,” Tati had told her as they collapsed the sails in the middle of the Aegean.  The ship went still and listed softly on the moonlit water, and Tati casually dumped the disassembled remains of Andreyushkin over the side.

“Why?”

“Because it was not for you to do.  You’re too young.”

Regina had silently accepted that, watching the crumpled heap hit the water with a dull splash.  But Tatiana had awkwardly held the little girl as she wept later on that night when she tried to sleep, her wrist tied to the moorings with a bit of rope.  Tati told her the story of Snow White again, until she fell asleep.

And now they were in Paris.  It was a good time to be here if you were trying to hide from someone, because the city was still in chaos after the Nazi occupation.  DeGaulle was trying to stitch the whole country back together but it was a damned mess, teeming with anarchists, former resistance fighters, ex-Nazi-collaborators, and an influx of Jews from France’s North African colonies.  The neighborhood she and Regina stayed in was at the ragged edge of the city, and awash in Sephardim making exodus from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.  Tati had no particular feelings about them, these Jews, but she thought it cowardly that some French sold their Jewish countrymen to Nazi occupiers in an effort to save their own skins.   Anna was a Jew.  Tatiana would have taken on a full garrison of Nazis to defend her. 

She made her disapproval well known to Regina.  Corruption, she explained, doesn’t only exist at the top, in the levers of power.  It is a rot that nibbles at the edges of all men’s souls. 

So they were living quietly, training, studying.  Tati had moved on from Anna Karenina, as she felt it had no more to teach her, and had taken up with Camus’s “The Stranger,” reading it in English so as to keep her skills sharp while they were living in France.  She distrusted the French people in general, but Paris was beautiful and, perhaps more importantly, there was very good food to be had, even on their careful budget.  Coffee from Turkey, croissants, crepes, bread, cheese…. Nobody, she told Regina, made bread and cheese the way the French did.  “Enjoy it,” she commanded, “because we won’t stay here forever.”

She packed a picnic lunch for them –baguettes, half a wheel of camembert, a fresh tomato– and they spent the remainder of the morning riding out of the city on stolen bicycles to an isolated place in the country where Regina was continuing her marksmanship studies.  The meadow she had chosen had been part of a farm owned by a Jewish farmer, who no longer lived here.  The Nazi occupiers had long since been rousted of course, but the husks of bombed-out vehicles remained, ghosts of the war that had not yet been exorcised.  It was here that Tatiana plucked cans and bits of detritus from the grass, placed them on fence posts and the sides of overturned vehicles, and they practiced shooting them off.  She’d decided to graduate Regina to practicing with a slightly larger pistol, something with a bit more recoil, since she was bigger now.

“You’re bigger,” she told Regina in French, almost reproachfully.  She was thinking of the money they would have to spend on new clothing.  That pinafore was, she had to admit, looking a bit small on her.

Regina squinted, squeezed off a shot, and watched a soup tin several yards away tumble off a stack of tires.  She had a good eye.  “Yes,” she agreed after a moment of looking for the French words she wanted, “I grew.  Children grow.”

“Only if you keep feeding them,” Tati grumbled back. 

Regina smiled her little knowing smile. 

“But they don't take very kindly to it if you don't,” came a woman’s voice. 

Tati was annoyed with herself.  She'd not heard anyone approach.  She glanced over her shoulder and saw a woman, brown skinned and tomboyish in black trousers and a turtleneck.  “I’m sorry,” Tati apologized.  “I didn’t see you there.”  She didn’t like being seen training Regina.

The woman spoke French like a native.  “Teaching your little one to shoot, eh, _maman_?” she inquired with interest.

Well, there was no hiding it.  They were both standing there with guns.  Tati nodded.

“A good idea,” the woman went on, a wisp of frizzy black hair escaping her messy chignon.  “Girls should know how to protect themselves, especially if they’re alone in the world.”  She glanced between them.  “Are you alone in the world?”

“In a manner of saying,” Tati answered.  She gestured to Regina.  “Her father was a soldier, killed in the war.”  Her own French was flawless.  It elicited not so much as a quirk of the eyebrow from her conversation partner.

The woman nodded.  “Mine too.  The first war, not this one.”  She hunkered down and smiled warmly at Regina.  “Are you a good shot, little one?”

Regina nodded.  She aimed at another soup tin that ringed the top of the tire stack, squeezed off, and watched it pop off the place where it sat.  The woman nodded with approval.  “We could have used you in _La Résistance_ ,” she chuckled.  “Half the men in my company couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”

Resistance.  No wonder, Tati thought.  She was still dressed like a resistance fighter.  Old habits died hard, didn’t they.

Absurdly, something about her reminded Tati of Peggy.  Peggy was not half so brown as this woman, and was feminine in a way that this woman wasn’t, but there was a confidence to her bearing, almost a swagger, and a sharp, perceptive gaze, that were the same.  She felt the woman sizing her up.  “And you are…?” Tati prompted.

“Oh!  Forgive me, how rude!”  The woman drew nearer and offered her hand.  “Hélène.” 

Tatiana gripped firmly in response to the woman’s strong grasp.  “Martine,” she replied.  “And that’s Beatrice, my daughter.”

Hélène grinned at them both.  “Well, welcome to the battlefield, or what’s left of it.”

Hélène built a fire, and produced a bottle of wine from the back seat of her jeep, which was parked a little ways up the rutted road.  Tati tried to decline politely, but Hélène was clearly too intrigued and not about to release them so easily.  She lit a fire and they passed the wine back and forth, and Tati sheared thin slices of the cheese she’d brought, placed them on the bread, and toasted it over the fire till it bubbled.  Then she dropped a thin slice of tomato atop each one.  They ate, and Tati shared their cover story: daughter of a French policeman, had gone to America to try to be an actress, married an American who went off to war, and now she was returned home to bury her father and try to piece together a life for herself and her daughter.  It was a good story.  It explained why Hélène would not know her from the Résistance, which inoculated her from accusations of being a Nazi collaborator.  God knew too many heads were rolling in France for that right now, all too literally.

“America?” Hélène remarked, impressed.  “You speak English, then?”

“Yes,” Tati answered. “But not well enough.  I never conquered my accent.”

Tati did not care for extended amounts of time around strangers, mainly due to Regina’s limitations.  “Your little cabbage is quiet,” Hélène observed, nodding at Regina.

“She’s shy,” Tati answered mildly, and that was the end of it.

Tati was sizing Hélène up the entire time, too, and decided she did not appear to present a danger to them.  She had heard that there were women fighters in the French Resistance, and it seemed that she had encountered one.  She’d forgotten the strange mix of pleasure and anxious energy that she felt around other women who were soldiers.  They were rare.  It was hard to resist the pull of instant camaraderie that such shared experience engendered, but she could never reveal herself as a soldier, and so she always walked away with a hollow feeling in her chest.  She could listen to war stories but never share them.

No, Hélène was no threat.  She was merely a warm, chatty soldier, a tomboy from a military family.  A sister to four brothers.  A patriot.  And she was clearly fascinated with the unaccountably feminine young mother and her nine year old daughter, who were both very good marksmen.

The afternoon grew late and the sun brushed the tips of the overgrown wheat fields.  “We’d better go,” Tati began, hoping to excuse themselves at last from Hélène’s frustratingly pleasant company.  The spring breezes flirted with the glowing embers of the fire and tugged at her collar absently.  “We have a long ride back to town.”

“What town is that?”

“20th Arrondissement.”

Hélène took in the bicycles parked by the split rail fence, and then the two of them in their dresses.  Her eyes grew to twice their size.  “Ah!  No no, you mean you’re going to ride those all the way back into Paris?”

Tati nodded.  “Of course.  It’s how we got here.”

Hélène was having none of it.  “No no no!  You’ll put them in the back of my truck.  I can give you a ride.”

“I really couldn’t trouble you,”  Tati demurred.

“No trouble!  Come on!  You’re crazy to ride all the way out here on your bicycles in your pretty dresses, why tempt fate so?”

Tati relented. Hélène was persistent.  And Tati was forced to admit, she rather liked her. Hélène reminded her of Peggy.  And a ride back to the 20th Arrondissement sounded very appealing after half a bottle of wine.  

  


******************

 

Despite Tati’s efforts to remain secluded, Hélène kept coming around after that.  She almost always came with beer or wine and a treat for Regina.  She came with newspapers and they discussed the day’s politics, and whose head was rolling next, and whether beheading was really a proper punishment for Nazi collaborators or they should just be left to rot in jail.  She was pleasantly fiery, strong and capable, and Tati liked that.  To the extent that Tati had any interest in French politics, she shared Hélène’s disdain for the Vichy cowards and their bowing to German rule. 

So she took the trouble to learn to make crepes properly, and cook some of these other French meals that she liked, so that she could invite Hélène to stay for dinner without arousing suspicion.  Tati dragged Regina to the Richelieu Library and, while she looked up and copied down recipes, Regina would sit in the oval shaped reading room, working her way through a stack of books about the ocean, or electricity, or the ancient Greeks.

And her nightmares stayed behind the curtain.  Her heart was dissatisfied with Koslova’s death; it should have meant more.  It should have lifted something in her, but she still felt weighted down.  She sometimes woke in the night, her wrist tied to the bed with the silk scarf she still needed, even after all this time, feeling like she had been dreaming of drowning but not being able to claw the memory of it forth. 

There were plenty of small fish to kill, if she wished, and of course, there was Fenhoff, whom she knew languished in an American prison.  But even that… If killing Koslova did not do what she had hoped, why would killing him do anything more?  If there was a cache in Paris, her memory was not being particularly forthcoming.  And so, she was losing stomach for her mission, running out of money, and running out of time to address the problem.  And people were looking for her, probably.  And she had a child to take care of.

_You should have left her in Prague._

But every cell in her body rebelled at the thought.  So she slept the sleep that the black widows did, and struggled to divine what would come next.


	9. Le Ciel et L'Enfer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tati zeroes in on a purpose.

_“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”_

_–Camus, The Stranger_

 

It was hard not to settle into life in Paris, even with the turbulence of it.  Most of it never reached their neighborhood, except in the newspapers that Hélène brought with her when she came.  The food was good, the architecture beautiful, and the climate agreeable enough, though something in her sometimes hungered for a proper, brutal winter.  Regina was receiving an education of sorts merely by soaking up the city and their trips to the library.  And Tati… well.  No-one had tried to kill her since she’d gotten here.  Not even once.  In fact, she was beset with restlessness, feeling pulled toward New York, and Fenhoff, and Peggy Carter. 

 _Caring, this is human.  Is this emptiness and dissatisfaction also human?_ If so, she wasn’t sure she wanted it.  It clawed in her chest, even as she felt herself growing roots in Paris.

After a time, she inevitably met a few of Hélène’s resistance friends, and they were not so dissimilar to Hélène; wry, strong, capable, funny.  They loved to drink.  And they were all somewhat questionable.  It was unclear what most of them did for a living, including Hélène herself, though she sometimes arrived driving a produce truck or a taxicab.  Jean-Marc, a long-faced, freckled youth from Normandy, often wore a tool belt that implied he did electrical repairs.  And then there was Marcel, the anarchist, who was quite open about the fact that he did nothing for a living and relied upon the largesse of rich, lonely old women.  There were apparently still a few those in Paris.  Everyone seemed to be knocking about, stitching life together in the postwar economy, and naturally they assumed Tati must be doing the same.

“Come with me to Le Caveau de la Huchette,” Hélène demanded one evening as she sat at Tati’s kitchen table, lighting what was maybe her fifth cigarette since she’d arrived an hour ago. “There’s some gypsy jazz tonight.  And you look like you can dance.”

“I can’t go out dancing and leave Béatrice alone,” she protested.

Hélène’s eyes danced with mischief.  “Marcel can watch her for a few francs,” she suggested.

Tati snorted.  “In that scenario, it’s Béatrice who would be watching Marcel.”

Hélène chuckled.  “True enough.  Martine,” she scolded.  “When is the last time you went out?”

“A long time,” Tati admitted.  That much was true.  A part of her missed dancing in places where she could be seen doing it.  She knew she was the best, even now. 

“Since your husband died, I’ll bet,” Hélène prodded.  “Come on.  Unless I’m wrong.  Maybe you just can’t dance?” 

Tati knew she was being baited.  She almost didn’t care.  A part of her was sorely tempted to let  Paris become her life, let Martine become her name.  She gave Hélène a piercing stare, and the rakish soldier woman almost seemed surprised by its intensity. 

“Sorry, I meant no disrespect to your husband,” came her hasty apology. 

The corner of Tati’s lip lifted mirthlessly.  “It’s not serious,” she replied, but her voice said otherwise.  Martine might be offended at the remark about her dead husband, but Tatiana was taking umbrage at the suggestion that she couldn’t dance.

Hélène blew some smoke and then set the cigarette down in the ashtray.  With a grin, she placed her elbow on the kitchen table, forearm up, hand open.  “Come on.  I’ll arm wrestle you for it.  If I win, you have to come out and Marcel will watch Béatrice.  If you win, you can be a boring sad sack and stay home.”

“You can’t be serious,”  Tati demurred.

“Of course I am,” was Hélène’s cheerful reply. 

Tati paused, delicately took off her cardigan and laid it over the back of the chair.  She sat down across from Hélène, her fingers twitching with delight.  A contest.  She gave Hélène a cool smile.  “You may regret this,” she warned.

Hélène was clearly amused by that prospect.  “I’ll take my chances.”

Tati placed her elbow on the table and gripped Hélène’s hand.  This was unwise, she thought.  She shouldn’t be showing her strength to anyone, it could cause trouble.  But she wasn’t about to concede defeat.  Hélène’s grip was firm and Tati wiggled her fingers a bit to settle into it.  She squeezed back to indicate that she was ready. 

They counted down from three, and began.

Tati wasn’t shocked that Hélène was strong.  You could tell from looking at her that she was muscled in ways that most women weren’t.  Her shoulders were broader, her arms lean, and when her biceps tensed, you could see their definition as clearly as if someone had drawn them with ink.  Tati was peripherally aware of them now, as the two of them struggled for leverage across the tiny kitchen table. 

But she enjoyed the look of amused surprise that crossed Hélène’s face.  “So you’re not all pretty dresses after all, are you?”  her opponent grunted.

“Whatever do you mean?” Tati riposted with false innocence.  Her heart sped up in her chest; the struggle, the push, it was almost like fighting.  It excited her more than she wanted to admit.  “Are you having  a bad day, Captain?  Are you tired?”

“No,” Hélène groaned, “how about yourself?”

“Lovely, thank you.”  Their arms trembled, their grips growing tighter as they each tried to assert their weight.  Finally, Tati decided she’d had enough.  She leaned in and with a deep exhale, she slammed Hélène’s hand down to the tabletop.

“Shit!” Hélène grunted.

Tatiana’s eyes flashed as she walked away from the table, wiping her palms on her skirt.

“Fine,” Hélène sighed, nursing her defeated hand.  “You win.  Stay home.  But you’d have had a better time if you came out with me.”  She stood up and took another drag off of her cigarette, smirking.  “And, not now, but at some point, you’re going to have to explain to me what just happened there.”

Tati smirked back.  A large part of her wanted to go dancing with Hélène, and become Martine, the lonely French widow finding new friends in post-war Paris, living a normal, quiet life home-schooling her daughter. _But you are not normal,_ she reminded herself, and _never will be.  You can only play_ _at it for a while before it crumbles, like it did in New York, and in Prague._

“Well,” she sighed, “I don’t really have money to go out.”  And that was somewhat true.   She had about another month’s worth of money if they were careful.  She couldn’t afford gypsy jazz and Pepa cocktails, heavy on the cognac.  She wondered again what most of Hélène’s charmingly sketchy friends did to pay their bills. 

“Well… if it’s work you’re looking for, I might be able to help you.”  Hélène’s gaze searched Tatiana’s demeanor and face, which still lit with a bit of wicked delight in spite of herself.  “Depends on what you’re willing to do.”

Tati stiffened.  She didn’t like Hélène’s tone or anything that it implied.

Hélène took a last drag off her smoke and stubbed it out.  She moved past the table and came closer to Tati.  Her voice dropped low and quiet.  “I think … I suspect…” she began carefully, “...that you have still more skills you’ve not yet shared with me.” 

Tati said nothing, but placed a hand on Hélène’s shoulder.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Hélène’s hand came up and tugged at the hem of Tati’s short sleeve.  “But I think you do,” she persisted quietly.  Her eyes met Tati’s and Tati wondered if she was understanding this correctly. 

“I’m not some whore,” Tati answered, her voice cold.  She had had enough of giving away that part of herself and it was never going to be for anyone’s enjoyment but her own, not if she could help it.

Hélène’s mouth pursed and her gaze was searching, prying.  “I meant nothing of the kind,” she murmured.  And then she took a sudden swing at Tati’s head.

Tati saw her fist coming a mile away and blocked it, sending a knee up into Hélène’s stomach and then striking her across the jaw with her other fist.  Hélène spun a little, stumbling, and knocked into the kitchen table, almost toppling it.  Tati had her over the table with one arm bent behind her back in half a moment.

Hélène started laughing. 

“ _Maman?_ ” Regina called from the tiny bedroom they shared.  “What was that?”

“Miss Hélène is very clumsy, Béatrice,” Tati called back, keeping her voice even.  “Everything’s fine.”

Hélène was still chuckling.

“What’s so funny?”

“I knew it,” she was panting.  “I knew you weren’t just some _flic’s_ daughter.”  Flics were like the beat cops of Paris, and were thought of as something of a joke, unlike the gendarmes, who were more like the Americans’ state troopers and were taken more seriously. 

“Who are you?”  Tati demanded.  “What do you want?”  She pressed harder and bent Hélène’s arm a little bit more. 

Hélène grunted in pain, but was still laughing.  “Easy, Martine, you’re going to break my arm off.”

“What do you want?”  Tati demanded again in a quiet hiss.  “My little girl is fond of you, so you’d best keep quiet because I won’t have her disappointed.  But come clean now, or this will be over very quickly and I don’t think you’ll like how it ends.”

Hélène took a few deep breaths.  “Martine, I’m exactly who I told you I was.  I don’t want anything but to be your friend.  But I don’t think you’re who you say you are.”

“Why, because I handed you your ass just now?”

“Well,” Hélène acknowledged, her face still pressed hard against the wooden tabletop, “partly, yes.  Half of my men couldn’t have beaten me that way.  But it’s not just that.  It’s how well you can shoot.  That’s not normal.”  A long silence as that word struck Tati.   _Normal_.  “Right?”

Tati said nothing.  She’d let this woman get too close.  Even if she wasn’t working for any of the parties looking for her, it was dangerous having someone running around Paris knowing even this much.

“And you know,” Hélène went on, “the way you live, it’s not...  I mean, you have hardly any furniture.  No photographs on the walls, no art from the market?  No photo albums, no… no _things_.  It’s not normal.”  There was that word again.

Regina came padding in and saw the odd tableau in the middle of the kitchen.  “ _Maman?_ What’s going on?”  She was curious, but didn’t seem alarmed.  After all, she’d seen Tatiana doing far worse to people. 

“Come on,” Hélène argued, “I have approximately three ways I could get out of this situation and all of them involve kicking your ass in front of your daughter.  So, how about you just let me go?”

Regina started laughing.  “She said ass,” the little girl giggled, and Tati realized that she didn’t use the word much in front of her.  If she was raising a killer, she would be raising a killer with exceedingly good manners.

“She did.”

“Miss Hélène, you’re very funny.  Kicking maman’s ass,” she laughed, and padded away, muttering to herself.

“Language, Béatrice,” she scolded as her “daughter” walked away.

“She has a lot of confidence in you,” Hélène observed.  “It’s very sweet.  Now how about you let me up?”

Tati huffed, and after a moment, released her. 

Hélène stood straight, and turned around, rubbing her arm and rotating her shoulder socket, trying to put it right. She was clearly pleased with herself for having guessed that there was far more to pretty Martine and her little girl than she’d been told.  “So,” she said, observing Tati for a moment.  “You’re not Resistance or I’d know you.  I don’t think you’re a Vichy spy: you’d be living a bit better if that were the case.  So?  What is it?”

Tati had to make a decision, and quickly.  She needed to keep as much as possible of the story she’d already told.  “I rob banks,” she said recklessly. 

“Where did you get your combat skills?”

“The American military,” she continued on.  “I did marry an American, and I joined the WAC along with him.  He’s dead.  I got bored in the Army.  They trained me for combat but stuck me in the typing pool.  After Steve died–”  Why had she chosen the name Steve?  It just sounded thoroughly American.  Like Peggy’s precious Captain America. “–I had to do something.  I had a child to care for.  You don’t make any money in the typing pool and a girl can’t get paid a man’s wage now that the war is over.”

“So you rob banks,” Hélène chuckled, incredulous.  “Why didn’t you say so?”

“It’s not a respectable profession,” Tati responded matter of factly.

“You may have noticed that I’m not particularly respectable,” Hélène pointed out.  “And neither are my friends.”

Tati nodded in acknowledgment but said nothing.

“So, then, why are you broke?” Hélène demanded after a moment.  “You must not be a very good bank robber.”

Tati bristled.  Hélène was constantly baiting her.  She had to stop taking the bait.  Why was she getting mad at the implication that she wasn’t a good bank robber?  She wasn’t even actually a bank robber!  But as far as Hélène was concerned, Martine was a master bank robber.  “No, I’m very good, actually,” she answered primly.  “But a job went bad a few months ago.  People are looking for me.”

Hélène nodded.  “So you’ve been laying low and living off your last score.”

Tati nodded.

“And your little cabbage?  Is she actually a midget?  Part of your crew?”  Hélène was half jesting, but half not.

“No,” Tati answered with a dry chuckle.  “She’s really a nine year old.”

Hélène nodded.  And then after a pause, asked, “But is she part of your crew?”

Tati laughed, but didn’t answer.

“I might be able to help you,” Hélène mused after a moment.  “I’m just the middle man for the middle man for the middle man, but… I may know about something, hm?  If you’re interested?”

Tati shrugged noncommittally.  “I suppose it can’t hurt.  Tell me.”

 

**********************

 

Tati and Regina stood in the middle of the Champs de Mars, underneath the ghostly hulk of the Eiffel Tower, ringed by the low-slung skyline and the distant fingers of other monuments poking through the mists.  Even from here, Regina’s eye could pick out the insistent blaze of the gold statue atop the Palais du Trocadéro, which stood a good hike from here.  Tati couldn’t remember when or why she’d been to Paris before, only that when she had, it had been different.  There had been more street artists and musicians, more golden light and sumptuous fragrances spilling from ornate openings in the white plaster faces of the elegant, old buildings.  There was still art and jazz and the writers that shacked up in the bookstores, now, but it all felt muted.  The city was exhausted.  It was broke.  It was tired.  The artists and intellectuals still came, fantasizing about marching into Picasso’s studio and befriending him, but Tati knew that New York was beginning to eclipse it.  It was a rough jewel, New York, but it would come to outshine Paris, at least in the short term.

However, Paris was still freedom, at least for those artists and intellectuals who looked like Hélène.

“ _Voleur de banque?_ ” Regina repeated.  “What does it mean?”

“Bank robber,” Tati replied.

“Why did you tell her that?”

“I had to tell her something.”

Regina seemed dissatisfied with this.  “Do you know how to rob a bank?”

Tati shrugged, dismissive.  “I know how to break and enter.  I can crack a safe.  I can kill people if they get in my way.  I can get around security systems and disable guards.”

Regina seemed skeptical.  She’d gone on break-ins with Tati, but never quite like that.  “So Miss Hélène is going to help you rob a bank?”

Tati shook her head.  “Not exactly.  But she knows someone who needs help robbing a bank.  So, I still have to hear the details, but I may decide to help.”

“Why?”

 _Questions,_ Tati thought.   _Why does she have to ask questions?_  “Because we are nearly out of money, and even our simple little life costs money.”

Regina nodded thoughtfully.  “And once we have money again, will we stay in Paris?  Or are there more bad people to find?”

Tatiana sighed heavily, not sure how to answer her charge’s question.  There were more bad people.  But she wasn’t sure they were worth killing.  She wasn’t sure they should stay in Paris.  They’d been in one place for too long and that was also bothering her.  “We’ll see,” was all she would say.

“I like Miss Hélène,” the child observed as they began trudging toward the ornately curved entrance to the Métro.  “I think she likes me too.”

“I suppose so,” Tati agreed.

“Not like Anna did, though,” the little girl finished wistfully.

“She brings you treats when she comes,” Tati pointed out.

“Yes, but I think it’s so that you will like her.”

“Not entirely.”

“Partly, though.”

Tati hmphed.  Regina was perceptive.  

 

*************************************

 

Regina stayed at home that night while Tati went out with Hélène to the place where they were to meet the friend of the friend of the friend.  She was surprised when Hélène showed up on a beaten-up retrofitted military-issue motorbike, but she’d climbed on the back and hung on as they made their way through the streets of Paris to here, in a part of town that rang vague bells in the back of her Tati’s mind.  Her high heels clicked along the street as they walked, and she took care not to let them catch between the damp cobblestones as she and Hélène made their way down the darkening street that was tinted blue in the fall of early evening.  They approached two buildings, side by side:  the left one resembled nothing so much as the façade of a church, with wooden doors, and golden sculptures of angels curling about a bright golden sun whose gilded rays burst forth, extending upwards toward heaven. 

The one on the right had a door whose cornice was the lustful, wide-open maw of a demon.  The sculptures above the door presented a tableau of servants of hell, torturing nude figures in their wickedness.

 _“Le Ciel et L’enfer_ ,” Hélène announced, grinning, as they drew near.   _Heaven and Hell._

“Nightclubs?”  Tati asked skeptically.

“Yes.  And good ones, too.”

“Are you certain this wasn’t a ploy to get me to go dancing with you?”

Hélène laughed broadly.  “I’d like to think I wouldn't need to resort to lies.  I prefer to wear a person down purely by persistence.”

Tati couldn’t help smirking.  It appeared she had a friend.  She had not had one before, not exactly.  At least, not since the one she’d been made to kill during her training.  Peggy had been a lover, as had Anna.  That was something different than this.  The girls at the Griffith had been kind to her, Gloria in particular, but she more tolerated their company than enjoyed it, and they had not come anywhere close to knowing her.  “So then,” she asked, gesturing at the doors.  “Which will it be?  Heaven?  Or Hell?”

Hélène smiled and took her by the arm.  “Tonight, it’s Heaven.”

They entered the high wooden doors and made their way down the dark, narrow hallway.  They passed coat-check, where Tati checked her dark woolen spring jacket, and Hélène checked her leather bomber jacket.  Even coming to a place like this, Tati noted, Hélène was still dressed more or less the same as usual. 

She watched as Hélène pulled aside a waiter in a smart little red jacket, and said softly, “We’re looking for Mr. Stern.”

He nodded, and led them into the main space.

The room was like a cavern, with tables positioned around a dance floor, burnished tin ceilings with ornate scrollwork on them, gilded sculpture positioned between the tables, and a stage at the front.  She heard the musicians before she saw them; not gypsy jazz, but a species of swing that sounded more American, that featured a saxophone that wailed with such emotional precision, it was like listening to a human voice, but one that screamed in a way no human voice could.  All the gilded edges of the room glowed softly in the low light.  When she got a look at the stage, she saw half a dozen black men in smart suits and fedoras squeezed onto the smallish stage.

“We’re lucky,” Hélène said in her ear.  “It’s Sidney Bechet tonight.”

Tati had no idea who that was, but she assumed it was someone she ought to know, so she smiled. 

The waiter seated them at a discreet table in the back.  An older man in an ugly tweed suit sat waiting for them.  He was balding, grey faced, with a sharp, discerning gaze that made Tati immediately wary.  It went without saying that someone planning a bank robbery was unlikely to be a relaxed bohemian, but she smelled something else on him.  She smelled American on him.  And she smelled G-man.  It was the bowtie, maybe, and as she got closer, the large-faced watch that peeked out from under his ugly suit cuff. 

“Thank you for coming,” he addressed them in English.  His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.  “I must admit, I’ve never seen such pretty bank robbers.”

“I’m not a bank robber,” Hélène responded in thickly accented English.  Tati schooled the surprise off of her face.  She supposed it made sense, the Resistance had worked with GI’s and British Intelligence officers like Peggy, but she wondered why it had never come up between them that Hélène spoke English.  “I’m just making the contact for my friend.”

Stern’s smile tightened.  “Then, young lady, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse the two of us.  This conversation is highly sensitive.”

_Highly sensitive.  Definitely a G-man.  
_

Hélène gave him a hard look, implying that he’d better not pull any funny stuff.  She walked away to the edge of the dance floor and began chatting with a waitress who was waiting for her opening to make her way across the dance floor to set the band’s drinks on the stage for them.  The waitress seemed to know her.  Tati wondered how often she came here.

“So,” Stern began, addressing her in a manner that she assumed was as friendly as he knew how to appear, “I need a bank robbed.  The deal is quite simple.  I need a very particular bank robbed, and a very small but very specific item taken from a certain safety deposit box.  I’ll pay you twenty thousand American for your trouble and you’re welcome to keep whatever else you take.  I can’t supply you with any gear or explosives you might need, not directly, but I can give you contacts for all of it.  The only thing of interest to me is the item in that box.”

_Oh, did this ever smell like a government setup._

“And I assume you have blueprints and information on their security procedures?”

“Of course.”

“And, if I may, what bank are we discussing?”

Stern smiled.  “Can’t tell you that just now, but it will be in New York.”

 _New York!_ Tatiana squared her shoulders.  Her heart was leaping.  It couldn't be the work of whatever God those Christians and Jews worshiped but surely, it could not be coincidence.  “You couldn’t find any bank robbers in New York?”

He chuckled.  “All the bank robbers in New York are known quantities.  I needed a foreign national, an unfamiliar face.  And…”  He leaned forward with a smarmy grin.  “...I need someone who can speak English and follow instructions.”

She nodded.  “And what’s the item?  Am I handling dangerous material?”

He shook his head.  “Nothing like that.”

She cocked her head and inspected his face.  “What is it, then?”

His grin widened as he showed more teeth.  “Something with sentimental value.”

 _So, it’s like that._  “I assume you’ll cover airfare.”

“Naturally.”

The music wailed, pulsing, infusing the room with its spirit.  “I’ll need a per diem.  Three hundred a day.”

He chuckled.  “You’ll get seventy five.”

She smiled.  “A girl has to ask.  Fine, seventy five.  And I’ll need to be paid in advance.”

“You’ll get half when you arrive, and half when it’s completed.”

She nodded.  “That’ll do.”

“I hope you’re as good as your friend says,” he said with a warning darkening his tone.

She glanced up and noticed that Hélène had taken hold of the waitress and was swinging her about the floor, and she felt an unexpected tug of envy.  Of what, she couldn't identify, and didn't dwell on it.  “I’m the best,” she replied easily.

Stern chuckled again.  He handed her a blank card with a phone number on it, and they discussed timing.  He was hoping to accomplish the operation in two weeks. 

“One last question,” she said as he stood.

“Of course.”

“Would it be possible for my flight to leave from Prague?”


	10. A Leveling Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tati and Regina return to Prague.

_“Throughout the whole absurd life I’ve lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living.”_

_–Camus, The Stranger_

  


Tati stared out the windows at the landscape whizzing past the train.  They had whipped through the marshy edges of Belgium and were now headed toward Frankfurt.  She hadn’t yet told Regina where they were going.  Regret rippled in the waters of her chest as she sought cool stillness but failed to find it.  

Hélène had placed a light kiss on Tati’s lips before dropping her and Regina at the train station in her produce truck.  “It’s too bad you can’t stay, Martine.  I was hoping to get to know you better.  Maybe you’ll come back when you’re done?”

Tati stared at her curiously.  It hadn’t quite crossed her mind that there was anything more between them than friendship.  She was suddenly, briefly, curious what it would be like to bed Hélène.  But there was no point wondering about that now, was there.  Whatever was in her stare, though, it seemed to unnerve the dusky soldier woman ever so slightly.  “I hope,” she answered.

She half meant it.  She half didn’t.  She was going to New York.   _New York!_  What were the odds that she would see Peggy, the woman whose affections had first breached her walls, what now felt like ages ago?  Maybe she would just skip leaving it to chance and seek her out once she’d completed the job.  Stern would want her to leave the country immediately, no doubt, but he could wait an hour or two if it came to that.  Tati liked Hélène, but her nerves skittered with excitement at the prospect of seeing Peggy.  She was too practical to have mythologized her, as she knew from the pop songs that many lovers did.  The fact remained, though, that Tati had few equals in this world, and Peggy was one of them.  For Tati, that was enough.

They changed trains at Frankfurt.  After they boarded, Tati unwrapped the two herring fischbrötchen they’d bought from a street cart.  She would have preferred something with a bit more flavor, she thought as she handed it to Regina, but it was the only truck close enough that they would be sure not to miss their train.  Regina bit into the crusty roll with the tangy pickled herring on it, and munched for a few minutes before announcing in English, “It’s good.  But French bread is better.”

Tati smiled faintly.  Her little one knew she needed to practice her English now that they were leaving France.

And then that pang came again, that stir of regret that rippled inside her.  

“Mama,” Regina asked while she ate, “where are we going?”

Tati stiffened.  After an uncomfortable pause, she replied, “To Prague.”

Regina was clearly trying not to get too excited.  “Are we going to see Anna?” she asked around a mouthful of food.

Tati scolded her gently.  “Don’t talk with food in your mouth, it’s rude.”

Regina finished chewing her food and then told her, “I’m sorry.  But I just hoped we would see her again.”

“She may not be excited to see us,” Tati warned.  Regina shrugged, and pulled a magazine from their travel pack and set to reading it, occasionally stopping to ask Tati for help with a word.

In truth, this was something of what Peggy would have called a Hail Mary pass.  She would be relying on the Anna’s horror having faded over the intervening months, and on Regina’s charms being enough to revive the affection that Anna had shown them back then.  

But she didn’t trust Hélène.  Too many questions swirled around her.  So, there was simply no other way.  

  


************************************

  


Prague flooded back into her senses, this time overwhelming her with fresh memories that were clear and sharp and pricked at her nerves, instead of the dull, nagging feeling she’d had before.  

The cobblestones greeted her, grey and wet, and the spires of the churches half-disappeared into the mist.  The straps of her shoes dug into her ankles a little where they crossed them, but she ignored it as she strode from the station with confident purpose.  She knew exactly where Josefov was, exactly which building was Anna’s.  The clock in the square began to chime the hour and Regina grasped her hand and made them stop she could watch all the little figures do their dances.  Tatiana stood, tapping her foot, waiting for it to be done with so they could move on.  

It was four in the afternoon and Anna would be in her tiny restaurant, rolling dumplings and serving up bowls of beet soup and putting fresh jars of spicy, pickled cheese on display to cure in the window.  When they arrived, they stood for a moment in the damp chill and looked in.  Two men sat at the small tables in the cramped space.  Anna was not visible.  She must be somewhere back in the kitchen.  Tati sighed.  This was the best way, she supposed.  Who knew how Anna might react if they came knocking on the door of her home.

They pushed inside, and the little bells on the door rang.  The smells immediately struck her; the sour scent of warm black bread, meat dumplings, gravy, and good beer.  They strummed all sorts of chords of regret and longing in her which she quickly muffled as she gazed back into the kitchen at the intermittent movement therein, waiting for Anna to come forth again.

Why was her heart pouding?

Why was Regina gripping her hand so tightly?

She knew Anna would never love her again.  Why did a part of her feel somehow hopeful that she might?

She would not sweat, she would not shed tears.  Those things were for children, and women who were not made like she was.

Anna emerged after a moment, bearing a platter with meat and gravy and cranberry sauce, just the meal that she’d made for Tati and Regina in her own home.  She froze behind the counter, all the color draining from her face.  “Tatiana…” she said after a moment, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Tati tried to smile but she knew that when she faked smiles, they only looked frightening, so she abandoned that tactic.  “Please, don’t let me interfere in your day.”

Anna frowned at her and came out to set the plate in front of a man at one of the small tables near the counter.  “You already have,” she replied, her tone salty and her brow furrowed.

Tati pretended not to feel the sting of that reply.  “I’m sorry… you’re not in danger.  I ...we… just need a word.”

Anna placed her hands on her hips.  “Well, you can have it here.”

Tati shook her head.  “No, I’m afraid we can’t.  It wouldn’t be… a good idea.”

Tati recognized that firmness, that steeliness that belied the fear beneath it.  Anna was afraid of her, and probably Regina too.  “This is the best I can do.”

Tati sighed, and stepped closer.  She considered putting a hand on Anna’s shoulder but thought better of it.  No sense making her feel threatened.  She dropped her voice very low and soft, and leaned in to murmur in Anna’s ear:  “I know you’re afraid of me.  But you must know that I would never hurt you.  I know you’ll never forgive me for lying to you about who I am, but Regina needs you, Anna.  None of this is her fault.  Don’t let your anger with me keep you from caring for the little girl.”  

Tati quietly breathed Anna’s scent, the wonderful smell of cooking and her clean soap and faint whiff of her sparingly-used cosmetics.  She did it so quickly she was sure Anna couldn’t tell.  Her scent… she ached for just a moment, for the nights they had spent in Anna’s bed.  She pulled back and looked at her, and her smile was benign and gentle.  “Please?  Can we talk privately later tonight?  After you close the shop?”

Anna looked genuinely annoyed with her.  Regina remained a vulnerability for her after all.  Tati had gambled on it, and had been right.  Regina had told the truth; she had not taken the “Pat the Bunny” book from Anna’s apartment.  Anna had slipped it into their bags when they had not been looking.  

After a moment of cold staring, she snapped, “Fine.  I close at eight tonight.”   Only then did she glance past Tati and take in Regina, who was wearing her hair long and dark, as she and Tati had done while in Paris.  “What did you do to her hair?”

Tati smiled and pointed to the dark curls poking out from beneath her hat.  “Same as I did to mine.”

Anna shook her head.  She mustered a smile for Regina.  “Alright, little bear,” she addressed her.  “You and Mama will go find someplace to be for a while and we can have a nice chat when you return.”

“Can we have some of your soup?”

Anna nodded, gazing at her for a moment more.  “Yes, if your mama says you can.”

They left, and Tati took Regina to the Prague National Gallery.  She had heard rumors that there would soon be a Communist coup d’etat here in Czechoslovakia, so who knew what would be changed or taken out of the museum when that happened.  It could be the only time she’d see its contents as it was now.  She didn’t object to the typical Communist philosophy of controlling what art the masses saw, but her mind was not so weak that she couldn’t go and look at some Rubens paintings without throwing her belief in her own superiority to the wind.

They came upon his “Samson and Delilah,” and Regina interrogated her about it for a few minutes before allowing them to move on.

“Why are they cutting his hair?”

“Because it will make him weak.”  Tati had to search a bit to remember the story in her memories.  She had little use for Bible tales, but this was one she’d picked up.  “He’s a great warrior with the strength of a hundred men.”

“Why do they want to make him weak, then?”

“Those are his enemies.”

“He shouldn’t let them cut his hair, then.”

“He doesn’t know.  Look, his eyes are closed.  He’s sleeping.  What is the lesson?”

“Sleep with one eye open?”

“Good.”

But Regina was not done.

“I didn’t let you cut my hair in Paris.  When will I get the strength of a hundred men?”

“Probably never, little bear.  You’ll have to rely on your wits and skills.”

“How did they know cutting his hair would make him weak?”

“Because he told it to the girl he loved, and she betrayed him.  What is the lesson?”

“Keep your secrets, even from people you love.”

“Good.”

Then Regina giggled a little.  “But why are her titties out?”

“Because they had sex, and then he fell asleep.  That’s what men do.”  And deciding that she was not really ready to explain any more about sex or Peter Paul Rubens today, she grabbed Regina’s arm and shuffled her along to the next painting.

  


************

  


They found dinner in another small restaurant not far from the museum.  They got some dumplings and some dark bread and Tati got a beer and Regina got a milk.  Tati was anxiously checking her watch, wanting it to be close enough to eight that they could start walking toward Anna’s restaurant.  Her flight to New York left in the morning.  This had to work. There was no other choice.  This robbery sounded sketchy, and she was concerned that Regina’s English wasn’t good enough to get her by in the States yet if she had to do without Tati for a bit.

She looked in her purse for the dozenth time.  Therein sat all the money in her possession.  A few thousand koruny for herself, plus a few hundred American dollars, and then the rest wrapped in paper.  Two hundred thousand koruny.  Eight thousand American.  She hoped it would be enough.

As they walked back to Anna’s, Regina asked if they would still get soup.  Tati nodded.  

They arrived at Anna’s.  Patrons were trickling out the door, waving their goodnights to Anna as they left.  Regina waited for a line of three old men in brown public worker uniforms to finish exiting and then they slipped through the door, parked at a table, and waited.

Anna exited the kitchen and stopped when she saw them, almost as if she hadn’t expected them to actually show up.  

“There you are,” she said after a moment.  She disappeared back into the kitchen and re-emerged with two bowls of her soup.

She came over, set them down in front of Tati and Regina, and then sat down across from them.  She looked for a long moment at Tati, not speaking.  Tati held her gaze, waiting to see what her opening move would be.  

“So.  Where have you been?”

“Different places.”

“Hiding from the people trying to kill you?”

“Yes, that.”

Anna shook her head.  “The SSR hung around for a long time after you left.  They asked a lot of questions.  Needless to say, I didn’t know anything, so I didn’t tell them anything.”   She leaned forward, inspecting her face.  “So, who is Dottie Underwood?”

Tati gave her a pained smile.  “She was an agent of the KGB.  Well, a specialized part of the KGB.  She was a spy, an assassin.  She sabotaged the Germans during the war.  And then she went to America after the war to … settle some scores with them, too.”

Anna absorbed that for a moment.  “And was she right to do that?”

Tati shook her head.  “It was a bad assignment.  It came from the mind of a madman.  But then, Dottie was created by a madman.  She didn’t understand the mission until it was too late.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed as she considered Tati’s words.  “You talk about her as if she was another person altogether.”

Tati’s fingers curled around the handle of her spoon and she slowly stirred the blob of fresh cream into the red of the soup, watching the pattern of white and pink swirl outwards.  “She was, in a sense.  She was something that the KGB created.  They took me as a child, and they did things to me that I would rather not repeat to you, and that was how they created her.”

Anna’s face pinched inward on itself.  She didn’t fully understand --how could she?-- but she understood enough.  

“So now, I have broken free of them, but the Americans would like to have a crack at me, you understand?”

“Because of what you did when you were there.”

“Yes.”  She sighed.  “And so, I run, I hide, and I do things, where I can, to keep them from creating more Dottie Underwoods.”

Anna frowned.  “And your little one?  She’s not yours, is she?”

Tati hedged for a moment.  “Not by blood,” she admitted.

“Whose is she?”

“She’s mine,” Tati insisted, a steel coming into her voice.  Regina smiled a little next to her, though her face was buried in her bowl of soup.

“But you did not bear her,” Anna persisted in return.  “So?”

“The KGB was funneling orphans from the system into this program, through some pimps in Nizhny Novgorod.  I rescued her.”  Tati felt something like quiet anger at the suggestion that Regina was not hers.

“Why not put her back into the system?”  

“Because.  She was chosen.  She was chosen to be made like me.  They would only find her and pluck her from another orphanage.”

“So you take a child with you on the run?  Teach her to be like you?”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

Anna shook her head.  “Why are you telling me all this?”

Tatiana breathed deeply.  “Because I want you to understand our situation.”

Anna leaned forward and looked at Regina.  “Regina, has your mama told you why you are here?”

Regina shook her head.

Anna looked at Tati.  “You didn’t come here from … wherever… just to make sure I understand.  What is it that you want?”

Tati placed her purse on the table.  “I have been… asked to go to America again.”

Anna stiffened.  “But isn’t that unsafe?”

“Yes.”  She reached into her purse and pulled out the wrapped wad of money.  “That is why I need you to take this.”  She handed it across the table.

Anna hesitated before taking the wrapped parcel and looking at it, then with slightly trembling fingers, opening it.  She gasped.  “Tatiana!  There must be a hundred thousand koruny here!”  Her eyes wide, she stared at Tati.

“Two hundred.”

“But why?”  Her voice was wary and frightened.

“I am going to America.  I have no choice.  But I cannot take Regina.  It is too dangerous for me there right now.”

Anna hastily rewrapped the money and shoved it back across the table.  “No, no.  I see what you are suggesting now, but no.”

Regina stopped eating and looked up.  “Tati?” she asked, as understanding came into her eyes.

“Hush, Regina.”

“But Tati, what are you doing?”

“I want you to stay with Anna while I’m in America.”

Anna was still shaking her head.  “Tati, what you ask is too much.  I can’t take her.  Not even for all this money.  You said yourself, you’re a danger.”

“Only I am a danger,” Tati replied carefully.  “Regina isn’t.  Anna, I trust no-one else but you.”

Anna’s chair scraped against the floor, a large sound in the tiny place.  “No,” she said again.  

“Tati, you can’t leave me!”  Regina was objecting.  “I’ve been to lots of dangerous places with you!  I can protect myself!”

Tati placed a hand on Regina’s shoulder, without even looking at her.  The girl’s cries would be difficult to hear.  It was why she delayed telling her the plan in the first place.

“Anna, I could be trapped.  I could be captured.  I could be killed.  I could be interrogated and tortured and I can stand all that, but I can’t allow Regina to be in that kind of danger.  Do you understand?  I can’t.  She is not mine in that I didn’t bear her into the world, but she’s been by my side for over a year.  She’s growing up.  I’m teaching her about the world.  She’s mine in all the ways that matter.”  Tati pressed onward, convinced that she had to make Anna understand.  “Please.  I won’t be long, but I can’t put her at risk.”

Regina, as she expected, began sniffling beside her.  “Tati, please… Tati, I need you, and you need me too!  What if –”

Tati knew what she was going to ask.   _What if you get in a situation like you did in Mykonos and I have to shoot someone to protect you?  What if you get in a situation like the one you did right here, in Anna’s own apartment, where I had to come out and slash the tendons in the back of a man’s leg to get you out of a tight spot?_  But Tati didn’t let her ask the question.  Anna didn’t need to be reminded that Regina was a killer in training, albeit a very small one.  Tati turned to Regina and placed both hands on her shoulders.  “Regina, I know that.  But this is different.  It’s not just another country in Europe.  It’s America.  The people I’m dealing with can’t know that you exist.  It’s safer for you to stay here.”

Tears spilled from the little girl’s eyes.  “But she doesn’t even want me!”  She dropped her spoon into her bowl and clenched her little fists at her sides.

Tati kept calm.  She reached for the cool inside herself, the icy window onto the world.  “Regina, it won’t be long.  I will do what I need to, and return.  And if I do it right, maybe we won’t even have to run anymore.  Wouldn’t you like that?”

Anna slammed her palm down on the table.  “Look at her, Tatiana, she doesn’t want to stay with me!  She wants to be with you!  You’re her mama, blood or not.”  She softened then, and looked at Regina.  “Regina, I would love for you to stay with me, it’s not that.”

“Then what?”  the little girl sniffled.

“It’s … it’s not safe.”

“It is safe,” Tati insisted.  “Safer for her than trying to bring her to America with me.  And she’s not a threat to you.  The people that want me don’t know about her.  They’re not interested in her.  They’re interested in me.”  Her eyes bored into Anna’s now.  She’d never let the part of herself that could be frightening show in front of Anna before, but she showed it now.  “They are bad men, Anna.  Would you let them take her?”

Anna’s hand trembled.  “She has you to protect her.”

“And I’m good.  The best, really.  But who knows what waits for me?  I’ve killed many men and withstood tortures that you could not imagine.  If I am saying to you that I’m not sure in this situation that I can guarantee her safety….?  No, she’s safer here, with you.  Don’t alert anyone to her presence, and no-one will bother you.”  She smiled, and she knew that it was as unnerving as it could be, because Anna suddenly looked sick and frightened in a way she hadn’t earlier.

Anna straightened up.  “I can’t believe you would drag me into this again,” she scoffed, clearly angry with Tati for showing up, but also clearly cracking as she considered that she, like Tati, did not want Regina in a situation in which Tati felt unsure that she could protect her.

Regina wiped her eye with the sleeve of her dark woolen coat.  “I’m not staying,” she said, and set her little mouth in a pout.  “I am going with you.”

Tati crouched down now, and turned to Regina.  “You know how dangerous I am, Regina.  And even I am not sure that things will go as smoothly as I have been promised.  And I don’t want them to know about you, plain and simple.”

“I can take care of myself!” the little girl insisted again.

Tati sighed.  “You’re learning fast, little bear, and one day you’ll be able to, but not yet.  Not against these people.”  She looked over at Anna.  “Please.  I’ve given you more than enough to care for her while I’m gone.  It should only be a few weeks.  A month at most.”

Anna wavered.  Regina’s tears were spilling down her cheeks as she tried to silence her sobs.

Tati wiped them away but there were more, streams of them.  Tati did not cry anymore, had not done so for a long time.  But in her chest was a hollow feeling.  Regina was not suppose to grieve like this.  “It’s not going to be a long time,” she promised.  

Regina looked over at Anna, her wide eyes forming the unspoken question.

“Fine,” Anna grunted, and took the wad of money, marched back into the kitchen, and came back.

“You must show me how brave you are,” Tati said, stern but gentle.

Regina blinked hard, several times.

“What lessons did we learn today?”

“Sleep with one eye open.”

Tati smiled faintly.  “And?”

“Keep your secrets.  Even from those you love.”

Tati nodded.  She saw in her peripheral vision that Anna was horrified to hear the child speak this way, but no matter.  “Smart little bear,” she said.  “You will be fine.  Anna will care for you.  She loves you.”

Regina looked down at the floor.   “Do you?”

Tati was taken aback.  “Do I what?”

“Do you love me?”

And the hollow place in her chest ached again, more deeply than before.  “Will it help you hear that?”

Regina shrugged.

Regina didn’t want to make herself vulnerable.   _Keep your secrets, even from those you love._  She didn’t want to admit to Tati that she wanted to know she was loved.  She leaned forward, and touched her forehead to Regina’s smaller one, and whispered, “You have been my little bear since the day I saved you.  You will still be my little bear when I am not here.  And I will come back for you very soon, and you will still be my little bear, then.”

Tati would have advised Regina not to love, but it was advice that she had been poor at following, herself.  

Regina flung her arms around Tati’s neck and sobbed again, then a moment later, went still.  Tati held her, a little awkward as she always was in these circumstances.  She pulled back and looked at Regina, at her serious little face.  She was trying so hard to replicate Tati’s cool.

Tati’s chin trembled.  There was no call to draw this out any further.  “Be strong.  Be brave.”  She stood.  “Take good care of her, Anna.  There is no-one else who loves this child.”  

As she walked away, she saw Regina go and run to Anna, and saw Anna pick her up, and hold her while she cried on Anna’s shoulder.

  
_And if I do it right, maybe we won’t even have to run anymore.  Wouldn’t you like that?_


	11. The Things She Wanted Most

_ “She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.”  
–Albert Camus, "The Stranger" _

 

New York grabbed Dottie by the guts from the minute she could see its skyline through the windshield of the yellow cab that she’d gotten at the airport.  Dottie, who was still in her, still part of her, in a way that she might never fully shake.  She was in New York, and she was Dottie Underwood again.  She couldn’t actually play that part, of course, because she could be recognized, but she was there, in her consciousness, ready to be summoned.  She lurked, ready to talk about the ballet in Des Moines, and snipe cops from office building windows, and to have Peggy Carter again.  Anna had said that it sounded like love, what she'd had with Peggy.  Tati wasn't so sure about that.  But her body wanted Peggy's, in a way that dug into parts of her that no-one else had touched.  

She would settle in at the hotel and then meet an associate of Stern’s.  She would find out what the item in question was, and when delivery was expected.  She would be given a list of names and numbers for who to call and what to get if she needed any special supplies.  She’d rather do the job without that if it was possible.  Explosives were inelegant and called too much attention.  She’d rather charm her way in, pick the locks, crack the safes.  Less mess that way.

The last time she’d been here she’d been prepared to kill thousands.  Now she was looking at how best to minimize casualties.  Had she changed that much in a year?  Or was it simply that her mission was different now?  How could she even separate one from the other?

It was getting easier to separate those things, though.  She was now a growing collection of preferences, of needs, of desires and even sometimes feelings, that were distinct from her mission.  Dottie was a killer and she existed to kill.  To deceive, to hide in the grass, and then to kill.  On a grand scale.  But Dottie did not have a child, or an interest in cooking, or a restless urge to dance with a French resistance fighter in a crowded nightclub to the music of black jazz musicians.  Those things all belonged to Tatiana.

One thing that Dottie did have, though, was Peggy.

Ah, Peggy.  She felt her body stir at the thought of Peggy.  The woman who had challenged her, loved her, fought her, even fucked her, once.  Her hands remembered the muscles in Peggy’s shoulders as she hung onto her in that bed, clung for dear life trying to keep the darkness in her head from asserting itself.  Her ears remembered the soft whispers, her deep alto, her English accent, saying beautiful filthy things while Dottie touched herself.  All her senses remembered, instantly, without being asked, the ways that Peggy filled them.  The ways she found of making love to Dottie without doing the things she wanted to do most.

She still thought about Dottie in the third person.  She existed apart from her, though simultaneously inhabiting her.  It was strange.  She would have to make some room in there.

After her meeting, she went back to the hotel to look at the floor plans of the bank, consider the security procedures and decide how best to proceed; how many men she would need, if any, and what she might want in the way of supplies.  It would be too complicated to charm her way into the safe deposit boxes.  These were not your average safety deposit boxes that were in an unguarded room where one simply produced the key and, viola!  These were the highly valuable belongings of wealthy and important men (because didn’t highly valuable belongings always belong to men).  These boxes were in a guarded area of the bank, in the back, near the main vault.  Too highly protected to simply waltz in.  Ah, well.  An old fashioned stick-up it would have to be, then.  

Regina’s absence first struck her hard at bedtime.

The hotel bed was large and soft, and the pillows too luxurious.  There was no need for all this goose down, she thought, almost angrily.  

She’d gotten through dinner, a fine enough plate of roast chicken and gravy served up at a nearby diner.  It felt a little off, only ordering for one, but she was hungry and she muddled through.  But here she was, preparing to settle into her black sleep, and there was no little one to tie her wrist to the bed.  She wondered what Anna would make of that practice, since Regina had also adopted it.  She’d find out soon enough, she supposed.

She managed to work out tying herself up.  The bed felt too large without the child’s weight beside her on the mattress.  She was overly aware of how there were no breathing sounds next to her.  She suddenly wondered if Regina was sleeping well, if Anna was reading to her, if she was keeping up with the books that Tati had left for her, if she was watching and learning all that she could, the way Tati had been teaching her to do.   _ Watch Anna make dumplings, _ little one, she thought,  _ watch what she does to to open and close the shop, watch her do everything, and learn it, because you never know when you will be served by calling upon such knowledge. _

She would sleep, eventually.  It would be dark, and murky, and restless, and as ever, there would be the dull thuds and muffled groans of memories she didn’t want, trying to break through into her dreams.  But they never did.  And they never would.

 

 

****************

 

 

Stern had agreed to find her a half dozen reliable men to help with the robbery.  All were foreign nationals; Irish, Polish, Turkish, Russian, French, Egyptian.  They all spoke decent enough English.  She didn’t know their names, didn’t want to know.  She simply addressed them each by their country of origin, and she had them address her as Madame.  She, of course, was still French, because that was what Stern thought he knew about her.  She was still Martine Manquant, French bank robber.  It was hard to keep being Martine, though, when being in New York had caused Dottie to come slithering out of the dark crevices of her personality, trying to assert herself every time she ordered a street hot dog while she cased the bank, or asked a cashier at the diner down the street to break a dollar for her so she could get coins to ride the bus.  

Four times in the next four days preceding the heist, she broke into the building across the street from the Telephone Company, and sought a view of Peggy through the scope of her sniper rifle.  She didn’t have all day to stalk her, so she was only lucky twice.  She was everything that Dottie remembered about her; strong, proud, with red lips and a fierce eye and those suits.  Ah, Dottie thought, those lovely suits. 

Those feelings flooded back, and she became uncomfortable and confused.  Peggy Carter was something to behold, one of the finest sights New York had to offer.  Tati was once again caught in being Dottie; she was caught in that desire, that lust, remembering the feeling of Peggy on top of her, inside her, her taste… She remembered not knowing what to do with what those things made her feel.  She still didn’t.  Much as she felt then, she wanted to possess her, but knew she would be thwarted, always.  Peggy couldn’t be hers.  Not now, not ever.  But she couldn’t seem to get her body to accept that as readily as her mind.

So, then, it was Dottie, and not Martine, who propelled Tati into a dress shop on the evening of the fourth day, because she saw a brunette mannequin in the window, wearing a navy blue suit and a red fedora, just like Peggy’s.  It was Dottie, and not Martine, who compelled Tatiana to spend a decent little chunk of her per diem on those clothes.  She would wear them for the robbery, she thought.  A little tribute.  

 

 

*********************************

 

  
“Not to the left,” she commanded coldly.   She cocked her gun and held it against the back of the bank manager’s head.  “I know if you turn it to the left, that it’ll set off an alarm.  Is this pittance really worth risking your life for?”  They had already taken what they needed from the safety deposit boxes, so now she would get what she could from the vault and call it a day.  It would be a good haul.  If she was careful with how they spent it, she and Regina wouldn’t need money again for a good long time 

The manager heaved the wheel on the vault door to the right, struggling as he did.  He was elderly, and probably close to retirement, she guessed.  The mick stood to the left of her.  He took instruction well enough but she hated that she often had to tell him things that ought to be obvious.  One more reason she preferred working alone to running in a crew.  Too bad this job couldn’t be done that way.

“Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” she demanded of him.  “Help him.”  She pulled the manager to the side and let the Irishman finish heaving the door open.  Before she could tell him not to, he walked in.  

She didn’t see who was inside until the mick was knocked cold from the left.  

On the other side of the door was Peggy Carter, looking splendid in a green dress, aiming a long gun at her.  Tati felt herself light up.  She couldn’t help it.  She couldn’t stand this close to Peggy without Dottie coming through again.  She had entertained some pathetic thoughts that she might pay a nostalgic visit to Peggy Carter on the terrace of that luxe penthouse of Howard Stark’s, where she was shacked up with that little waitress.  But how maudlin that would have been.  This was so much better!  They would fight, the way they did before!  She would feel her strength, she would take and land blows, she would touch her!  She didn’t believe in destiny or God or fate but she believed that it could have happened no other way.  There was no other path for her than to be here in this room, with Peggy Carter again.  

She could smell her lavender soap even from ten feet away.

Her body tingled.  

“Dorothy Underwood, you’re under arrest.”

Peggy was pointing a Winchester at her.  The bank manager had taken out a little .22 and was pointing it at her. He wasn’t much concern, though.  She sank slowly down to drop her gun, watching Peggy’s eyes on her.  She wondered, was Peggy as happy to see her?  She had that fierce gleam in her eye.  Dottie loved that fierceness.  She couldn’t let that go to waste, after all.  She suspected that Peggy wanted a good fight.

She knocked out the bank manager and ducked behind the open vault door.  Peggy just barely missed her with a single shot.   _ Come on, Peg, you’re not even trying, _ she thought with glee.  And then she leapt up, grabbed the top of the vault doorframe, and swung into the vault, landing a foot squarely in the middle of her chest.  Peg went flying back, her skirt billowing around her like a sail.   _ And so it begins. _

They didn’t pull their punches.  Peggy meant to arrest her.  Tati intended to walk free.  It was a shame, but they weren’t on the same team, once again.  Twice, she landed punches in Peggy’s face, kicks in her chest and stomach.  Twice, Peggy came back swinging.  Peggy knew how to fight and she was not built to fall apart under a punch or two.  Hell, Dottie Underwood had struck her twice with a baseball bat and she’d kept on coming.  But, oh, the impacts.  The deep, wonderful pain of them.  Peggy punched with unrepentant swagger and Tati knew that no matter what the outcome of their fight, she'd be feeling those punches the next day.  Peggy was something to see when she was in motion. 

Tati managed for a moment to get behind her, restrain her arms.  She was pressed against Peggy’s muscled back that felt every bit as good as she remembered.  Peggy struggling in her arms, just like she did when they played at it during their rough sex games, felt better than Tati could articulate.  And her scent, her scent, her grunting… It was so much.  

She looked, smelled, felt, sounded so good.  “New hairstyle?” she panted in Peggy’s ear, and it was as much a taunt as a sincere question.  How could Peggy look more beautiful than Tati even remembered?

Tati wanted to bend her over that table and fuck her, take her from behind like she’d done before.  The thought of it made her wet.  But sadly, it was not the order of business today.  So instead, she slammed Peggy’s head into the tabletop, felt her swoon a little, and for a moment, she thought the day would be hers and she would escape.

But Peggy never broke, did she.  Not in bed, and not in fighting.  An elbow came back and clipped Tati in the face.  She stumbled back. She heard Peggy grab a sack of coins from off the shelves behind them and Tati didn’t see her coming, she just felt the impact of it against the back of her head.  The world went dark and she saw a shower of gold coins in the air before her eyes.  She felt herself collapsing slowly.

_ Regina, _ she thought desperately.   _ I told her I wouldn’t be long.   _

The last thing she felt was cold steel cuffs locking into place around her wrists.

The last thing she heard was Peggy’s voice, sardonically taking note of her fashion choice and remarking, “Love the hat.”

The last thing she thought was,  _ Regina. _


End file.
